SEOUL, Aug. 12 (UPI) — South Korean President Lee Jae Myung will travel to Washington to hold a summit with U.S. President Donald Trump on Aug. 25, Lee’s office said Tuesday, with trade and defense issues expected to be at the top of the agenda.
The three-day visit will be Lee’s first trip to the United States since taking office in June, presidential spokeswoman Kang Yu-jung said at a press briefing.
“The two leaders plan to discuss ways to develop the Korea-U.S. alliance into a future comprehensive strategic alliance in response to the changing international security and economic environment,” Kang said.
“They will also discuss ways to further strengthen the robust South Korea-U.S. combined defense posture and to cooperate to establish peace and achieve denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula,” she added.
The summit comes weeks after Seoul and Washington struck a trade deal that lowered Trump’s threatened 25% tariffs on South Korean goods to 15%. As part of the package, South Korea pledged to invest $350 billion in the United States and to purchase $100 billion in U.S. energy.
Based on the tariff deal, Trump and Lee will consult on economic cooperation in semiconductors, batteries and shipbuilding, as well as partnerships in advanced technologies and key minerals, Kang said.
The future of the decades-old South Korea-U.S. military alliance is also expected to be in the spotlight as the two countries prepare to kick off their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield joint exercise on Monday.
During his previous term in office, Trump called for massive increases in Seoul’s financial contribution for the 28,500 U.S. forces stationed in Korea.
Seoul signed a new five-year cost-sharing agreement with Washington in October, but Trump has suggested he would look to renegotiate the terms of the deal amid calls for allies to increase their defense spending.
“South Korea is making a lot of money, and they’re very good,” Trump told reporters at a Cabinet meeting in the White House last month. “They’re very good, but, you know, they should be paying for their own military.”
On Friday, Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, discussed the need to restructure the military alliance in response to an evolving regional security environment.
“Alliance modernization … reflects the recognition that the world’s changed around us,” Brunson told local reporters at a press briefing in Pyeongtaek. “We have a nuclear-armed adversary who’s north of the border. We have increasing involvement of Russia, along with the DPRK, and we also have the Chinese and the threat that they pose to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is the official name of North Korea.
Brunson avoided the question of a potential of U.S. troop reduction on the peninsula, stressing military capabilities and strategic flexibility over numbers ahead of the Lee-Trump summit.
“We’re going to have two chief executives sitting down together to discuss not only the security situation in the region, but the security situation in the world,” he said. “For us, it’s about the capabilities. We want to have the right capabilities resident on the Peninsula.”
Lee will be in the United States from Aug. 24-26 for his summit with Trump. In response to local media reports that Lee may also stop in Japan around the time of his U.S. trip, presidential spokeswoman Kang said that nothing had been confirmed.