(Original title: Li in Ming: South Korea can no longer follow the "safe rely on the United States, the economy rely on China" route)

According to the Associated Press, South Korean President Li said on May 25 in Washington that, unlike in the past, the South Korean side cannot continue to follow the so-called "Americian" route (safe relying on the United States, economy relying on China).

Trump welcomes visiting South Korean President Lee Jae-myung (data map)

On the same day, Lee Jae-myung was invited to give a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an American think tank, and made the above statement on the statement that "South Korea relies on the United States for security and seeks economic benefits from other places".

According to the report, "Anmi" refers to South Korea's security cooperation with the United States, economic cooperation with China, and strives to "release the source" between the two countries.

Lee said that South Korea adhered to the "An-Mexico-China" line before the United States strongly held China, and even adopted a blockade policy against China. In recent years, the international community has seen a supply chain restructuring, and the United States has made clear its policy to contain China.

Li in Ming pointed out that the U.S. and China form competitive and even confrontational relations while cooperating in individual fields, this is an undeniable fact. the two countries are geographically closer, and the Korean side is committed to properly addressing the inevitable problems between the two countries andining good bilateral relations.

Extended reading

Lee Jae-myung's White House "Tightrope Show": Carefully prepared for a straight back, laughing about North Korea and looking at the faces of China and the United States

¡°What¡¯s happening in South Korea? it looks like a cleansing or a revolution. We can¡¯t continue to do business with them in this situation. Today I¡¯m going to meet this new president at the White House. Thank you for your attention!¡± On the morning of August 25 local time, US President Donald Trump announced a ¡°disaster¡± meeting with the South American heads on social media ¡°real social¡±, while South Korean President Lee Ming was about to visit the White House, a dramatic atmosphere of tension.

At noon on the 25th, Lee smiled in the car after his arrival at the White House and shrugged his hand with Trump at the doorstep. Through the media live footage, Lee kept his waistline straight during the public conversation, with his hands on his knees, in contrast to a relaxed Trump.

On August 25, 2025 local time, in Washington, DC, U.S. President Trump shook hands with South Korean President Lee Jae-ming in the Oval Office of the White House

This is Lee Jae-myung's first summit meeting with Trump since he took office as South Korean president in June. The two sides held a public meeting for about 54 minutes, and then held a wide-ranging meeting behind closed doors in the cabinet conference room and had a working lunch together. The talks between the two sides lasted about 140 minutes, exceeding the originally planned 2 hours.

In a public meeting with reporters, Trump talked about the US-South Korea alliance and said that the United States is considering purchasing ships from South Korea, and South Korea will increase investment in the United States. In his opening remarks, Lee Jae-myung expressed the hope that the Korea-US alliance will not be limited to the military field, but will further expand to the fields of economy, trade and technology, and develop into a future-oriented alliance.

A spokesman for the South Korean Presidential Chamber told the media that during the closed-door talks, Trump wrote his own hand on the note: ¡°You are a great person and a great leader ... I am always with you¡± and handed it to Lee in Ming. According to U.S. media reports, Lee expressed his praise for Trump¡¯s role in solving conflicts around the world, and joked that President Trump should build a ¡°Trump Building¡± in North Korea and play a golf with North Korea¡¯s top leader Kim Jong Un, causing Trump to laugh continuously.

It is noteworthy that Trump has repeatedly described his "going well" with Kim Jong-un, saying that North Korea has "enormous potential".Lee in Ming proposed a meeting with the US leader, Trump replied that it was a wise proposal, and in response to a reporter's question after the meeting said that he hoped to meet Kim Jong-un in the year.

Judging from the information released by South Korea and the United States after the meeting, the two sides did not touch on substantive issues in the economic and security fields. When Trump was asked by the media about the reduction of US troops stationed in South Korea and the negotiation of trade agreements, he did not make a clear statement.

Zhan Debin, vice president of the Korean Peninsula Research Society of Shanghai City and director of the Korean Peninsula Research Center of Shanghai University of International Business and Economics, told the paper that the talks were relatively successful in terms of establishing personal relationships between the leaders of South Korea and the United States. However, no progress was released, such as the follow-up details of the tariff negotiations and the issue of modernization of the South Korea-US alliance raised by the United States, which reflects Trump's unpredictability. For South Korea, no agreement was reached on the issues set up before the trip, and this meeting can only be regarded as no failure.

On the other hand, at the same time as Lee Jae-myung's visit to the United States, the special envoy of the South Korean President is visiting China to convey the message that "the President attaches great importance to Korea-China relations". The Washington Post said that for Lee Jae-myung, this meeting was a diplomatic "tightrope show", especially to deal with the balance of Sino-US relations. South Korean officials said they wanted to avoid embarrassing scenes in the Oval Office similar to those of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

See before strong pressure, see after "still friends"

On the afternoon of August 24, local time, Li Ziming and his wife Jin Huijing arrived at Joint Base Andrews in the suburbs of Washington. Abby Jones, deputy director of the Protocol Department of the U.S. State Department, wore sunglasses, came forward to welcome and shake hands. Colonel Joshua Jin of the U.S. Air Force. He presented a commemorative coin, and Li Ziming took a look at it and put it in his suit pocket. The etiquette arrangements were relatively simple.

Local time August 24, 2025, Washington, D.C., United States, South Korea's President Li Keqiang and Ms. Kim Huizhou arrived at the Andrews Joint Base near Washington, D.C., and walked down Air Force One.

In some South Korean online communities, there is a saying that the "president was given a cold reception", and it is compared to the scene of the US laying the red carpet and arranging an honor guard to greet the former South Korean president Yoon Seok-yeok when he visited the United States in April 2023. In fact, the format of Lee Jae-ming and Yoon Seok-yeok's visit is different. Yoon Seok-yeok's visit to the United States two years ago was a state visit. Lee Jae-ming's work visit focused on practical negotiations and other work. However, judging from the content of the public talks between the two sides, the practical consultations seem to be less "real".

Before the talks, South Korea's head of national security, Wei Shengluo, said that the leaders of the two countries will focus on three main topics: stabilizing South Korea-US economic and trade relations, modernizing the South Korea-US alliance, and exploring new areas of cooperation. Recently, the US has been increasing pressure on South Korea on the issue of alliance modernization, publicly calling for "expanding deterrence in the Indo-Pacific region", and putting forward new requirements for further opening up the market for agricultural and livestock products in the tariff negotiations reached on July 30, while urging South Korea to expand investment in the United States.

Around the US-Korea trade deal, Trump posted on social media on July 31 ¡°Truth Social¡± that ¡°under the agreement, South Korea will provide $350 billion to U.S. owned and controlled investment projects, which will be selected by me personally as president.¡±

According to South Korea's Central Daily, sources said the United States had asked before the summit that the $350 billion investments promised by South Korea should be written in the summit results documents, but the extent to which the document would be specifically written was disputed. During the negotiations, the U.S. even once put forward the possibility of canceling the summit talks as a means to boost the negotiation code.

In the face of severe events, South Korean Foreign Minister Zhao Zhao had to take the first step. At the time of the Korean summit meeting on August 23, Zhao Zhao went to the United States on the afternoon of the 21st. According to Korean International Radio (KBS) reports, it is very rare for South Korean Foreign Minister not to visit Japan with the president, but to visit the United States alone. and Zhao Zhao did not take a direct flight to Washington, but chose a flight through Atlanta to arrive in Washington earlier. South Korean Foreign Ministry officials explained that Zhao Zhao Zhao was well prepared for the talks.

At the same time, three of the main officials of the South Korean Presidential Office joined the team of visiting the United States, with South Korean National Security Secretary Wei Sanlo, President's Office Policy Secretary Kim Yong Feng and President's Secretary's Office Secretary Zhang Zhang Qingdu joining the team.

During the White House meeting, Lee Jae-myung said that the ROK is willing to participate in the revival of shipbuilding and other manufacturing industries being promoted by the United States. Trump said that the United States intends to purchase some ships from South Korea, and hopes that Korean shipbuilding enterprises will use local labor to produce in the United States.

Speaking about U.S.-Korean economic relations after the meeting, Trump said South Korea wanted to ¡°re-negotiate¡± the U.S.-Korean trade deal reached in July, ¡°I don¡¯t mind. That doesn¡¯t mean they can get anything.¡±

Just hours after Lee talked with Trump in Ming, Korean Airlines announced that it would purchase more than 100 Boeing aircraft.This is the largest transaction in South Korean aviation history.The acquisition is to include the purchase of spare air engines from U.S. General Electric, with a total value of about $50 billion, the aircraft is scheduled to be delivered "until the end of 2030".

Mr. Trump said he would soon visit South Korea to attend an economic and trade conference hosted by the South, which Yonhap said was likely to be an informal meeting of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders scheduled to take place in South Korea from October 31 to November 1.

In addition, around the ¡°modernization of the Korean-American alliance¡±, the US demanded that South Korea increase defense spending and increase the strategic flexibility of the U.S. military in South Korea. Li said on the plane to the United States: ¡°It is difficult to agree.¡± ¡°The New York Times notes that South Korea is concerned that this ¡°strategic flexibility¡± as the United States calls it could make South Korea more vulnerable to North Korean attacks and increase the possibility of South Korea¡¯s involvement in the Taiwan Sea situation.

However, South Korea and the United States did not explain the modernization of the alliance, but Trump proposed to ask the South Korean side to hand over the land ownership of some "large military bases" of US troops stationed in South Korea to the United States, so as to get rid of the "lease" matter. In fact, according to the agreement between the United States and South Korea on the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, South Korea not only provides land to the U.S. side free of charge for use as a U.S. military base, but also shares a large amount of expenses for maintaining the garrison.

There are still many unresolved issues between the United States and South Korea. In addition to the follow-up of trade negotiations, there are also the size of the U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and the defense expenses shared by South Korea. After the meeting, Trump refused to say whether he would reduce the size of US troops stationed in South Korea. He told reporters: "We have always been friends, and we are still friends."

Li Wei, a researcher at the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told The Paper that compared with the Biden administration, the Trump administration has reduced the role of the Korea-US alliance. As Trump said before-South Korea is a "money-making machine". He emotionally despises South Korea and attaches importance to North Korea. However, this does not mean that the closeness of the US-South Korea alliance has been greatly weakened, because the bureaucratic interaction and some cooperation mechanisms between the US-South Korea alliance and the US, Japan and South Korea have been established for a long time.

The topic of North Korea is of mutual interest to both sides

On the special plane flying to the United States on the 24th, Li Zaiming was asked how to prepare for negotiations with Trump. He said with a smile: "President Trump has written his own way of negotiating in" The Art of the Deal "It's in." It suggests that he has learned Trump's negotiating style. "The Art of the Deal" is a biography co-published by Trump and journalist Tony Schwartz in 1987, describing Trump's rules for doing business.

¡°Some say I¡¯m like ¡®Trump of South Korea.¡¯¡± Lee said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal last December, ¡°I¡¯m not an extreme partyist, but a realist.¡±¡±He highly praised Trump, who was then a presidential candidate, for aiming to end the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and for his intention to rebuild relations with the DPRK.

Li Ziming and Trump have something in common. They both escaped assassination before taking office. The two talked about this "common experience" when they first talked on the phone in June this year. In addition, they are all interested in meeting with North Korea's top leader Kim Jong Un.

In his opening remarks at the South Korea-US summit, Li Zai-ming said that he hoped Trump would meet with Kim Jong Un, and Trump was the only person who could solve relevant issues. The remarks seemed to open Trump's chatterbox about North Korea. The New York Times stated that Trump seemed eager to get involved in one of the most thorny issues in South Korean politics. During the talks, he repeatedly brought the topic back to his relationship with Kim Jong-un, and even once proposed arranging a meeting for Kim Jong-un and Lee Jae-ming.

However, the current atmosphere on the Korean Peninsula is not harmonious. After Lee Jae-ming came to power, he quickly reversed the tough line of his predecessor Yoon Seok Yuet toward North Korea and stopped the loudspeaker broadcasts to North Korea that had lasted for more than a decade. Recently, he also said that South Korea is prepared to implement the feasible parts of the existing South Korea-North Korea agreement in stages.

Kim Jong-un, Deputy Secretary of the Central Committee of the Labour Party of the DPRK, said on July 28 that in the past, South Korea unilaterally declared North Korea as its main enemy and advocated the atmosphere of extreme confrontation, it was impossible to change all the results in a few words.

During Trump's first presidential term, Trump and Kim Jong Un held the first meeting in the history of serving leaders of the United States and North Korea in Singapore in June 2018, held the second meeting in Hanoi, Vietnam in February 2019, and met again in Panmunjom, the demilitarized zone on the Korean Peninsula in June of the same year.

Since his second presidential term, Trump has been trying to promote the realization of another dialogue between the DPRK and the United States, while now Lee Jae-myung hopes that Trump will bridge the gap between the DPRK and the ROK.

Li Qi, who has long studied US policy on the Korean peninsula, believes that it is unlikely to use South Korea as a channel for US-North Korea communication like during the Moon Jae-in administration, but it is more likely that the US and North Korea will directly establish a dialogue channel. "Trump's North Korea-related remarks are mainly based on probing. Whether it can be realized depends on the response of the North Korean side, and it also depends on the working-level contact between the US and the DPRK." Li Qi told The Paper that North Korea may make a long-term comprehensive consideration in the face of the US's probing. Contact with the US will weaken the relationship between South Korea and the US, and may also affect the relationship between North Korea and Russia. The US and North Korea have not yet conducted open working-level contacts, and it may be too early to talk about a summit meeting between the two sides

Li believes that for the United States, the Trump administration may still take the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict as the first choice in foreign affairs, in the case of the Russian-Ukrainian issue has not yet been resolved, to a breakthrough in the relations with the DPRK, necessarily involves many other relations, needs to take into account the relations of the DPRK, DPRK and the US-Korean allies.

The United States and South Korea, while showing friendship to North Korea, carried out joint military exercises as usual. The Korean Central News Agency published a commentary on August 20, condemning South Korea and the United States for holding the "Ulji Freedom Shield" joint military exercise. The article said that the aggressive and provocative nature of the large-scale joint military exercise between the United States and South Korea and its negative impact on the situation on the Korean Peninsula and the region will not change.

"South Korea can no longer follow the 'Anmei Jingzhong' route."

On August 25, after his talks with Trump, Lee Jae-myung was invited to give a speech at the US think tank "Center for Strategic and International Studies" (CSIS). According to Yonhap News Agency, Lee Jae-myung said in his speech that, unlike in the past, South Korea cannot continue to follow the "Anmei Economic China (security depends on the United States, economy depends on China) " route.

Li said that in recent years there has been a supply chain restructuring in the international community, and that the United States has made clear its policy on China.So South Korea can only act and make judgments within the basic policy framework of the United States.He pointed out that the two countries are geographically closer, and the Korean side is committed to properly addressing the inevitable problems between the two countries andining bilateral relations.

On the same day that Li departed for the United States on May 24, the South Korean special mission visited China and handed over to Li's personal letter.The move reflects Li's willingness to properly manage Korean-China relations while prioritizing the Korean-American alliance.

According to Xinhua News Agency, on August 24th, Wang Yi, member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Foreign Minister, met with Park Byung-seok, special envoy of the South Korean President, in Beijing. Wang Yi said, "Today marks the 33rd anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, and bilateral relations are in an important period of improvement and development. China has always attached importance to China-ROK relations."

Zhan Debin analyzed that Li Ziming sent a special envoy delegation to China while visiting the United States in order to balance Sino-US relations. However, judging from the content of Li Zai-ming's speech in the United States, he still puts the South Korea-US alliance first, and relations with China are in a relatively secondary position.

¡°Hong Kong-U.S. relations will not necessarily go to the point of promoting values diplomacy during the Yinxiang government.¡±Jendbin added that Lee told an accompanying reporter on Monday that it was difficult to accept the ¡°strategic flexibility¡± of the U.S. military in South Korea and that he would not interfere in the Taiwan Sea, so he might be following the United States on the basis of ensuring such a bottom line.

After taking office, Lee Jae-myung emphasized "pragmatic" diplomacy, saying that he would expand and diversify the field of South Korean diplomacy, promote regional strategy and global South cooperation. He proposed to develop relations with China, the United States, Japan and Russia based on the principle of South Korea's national interests and practicality. However, in the context of the Sino-US game and the fierce confrontation between the progressive and conservative camps in South Korea, some analysts believe that the Lee Jae-myung government's China policy will not make a big breakthrough.

Trump has doubts about Korean relations.

Trump and Lee Jae-myung also talked about US-South Korea-Japan relations during the meeting. Lee Jae-myung said that the cooperation between South Korea, the United States and Japan is very important. In order to promote the development of South Korea-US relations, South Korea-Japan relations should also be improved to a certain extent.

Trump said that the U.S. side will develop U.S. oil and gas resources in Alaska together with South Korea, but there are historical issues between South Korea and South Korea, and he has doubts that it will be difficult for South Korea to deal with. Li said that, given that Trump attaches great importance to South Korea-US cooperation, he visited Japan before the summit of the United States before dealing with Trump¡¯s concerns.

Before visiting the United States, Lee Zai-ming visited Japan on the 23rd and held summit talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. Shigeru Ishiba used a special "Shipo-style curry" to entertain South Korean guests, while Lee Jae-ming prepared stewed chicken and soju from his hometown of Andong.

Xi Jinping visits Japan and meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Lee is believed to have broken the practice of priority visits to the United States after the inauguration of the South Korean president. The Associated Press believes that South Korea is currently facing pressure from the United States and is under pressure from the United States on issues such as trade and defence.

According to Korean media reports, during the ROK-Japan summit, the two sides spent a lot of time discussing the negotiations with the United States. Wei Shengluo said at a press conference on the 24th that the small-scale talks between South Korea and Japan were mainly about the Japanese side's introduction of diplomatic experience with the United States and conveying them in the form of 'reference opinions', which were of great reference value.

After the summit, the two sides agreed to stabilize and greatly develop bilateral relations, while also confirming that they will strengthen cooperation with the United States on the basis of Japan and South Korea in order to the complete denuclearization of North Korea, and promote close cooperation between the three countries.

According to Xinhua news agency reports, analysts believe that once in the issue of Japanese affairs strongly expressed Li in Ming, breaking the practice behind both its internal affairs from the opposition leader to the country's leader, as well as the diplomatic needs of Japan to jointly cope with the U.S. pressure on customs and security issues. but in the long run, the historical problems between Japan and Korea are difficult to fundamentally solve, and the future will continue to affect long-term relations.