U.S. links security talks to progress on Korean investment

The United States has told the Korean government that it would be difficult to separately accelerate follow-up security talks under the joint fact sheet agreed at the Korea-U.S. summit unless progress is made on Korean investment in the United States, according to exclusive reporting by the JoongAng Ilbo.

The message has complicated Seoul's efforts to keep trade and security issues as separate as possible, leaving the two countries' disputes increasingly intertwined and making it difficult to find a breakthrough on either front. The government is seeking to arrange a visit to Washington by Foreign Minister Cho Hyun in September in an effort to break the impasse.

“With a number of contentious issues between Korea and the United States still unresolved, including investment, it would be difficult to move forward on security as if nothing had happened," the United States recently told the Korean government, according to multiple ruling bloc sources Thursday.

This marks the first known instance of Washington directly telling Seoul that it intends to link trade issues of Korean investment in the United States to security negotiations.

Korea and the United States included the results of their tariff and security negotiations in a single joint fact sheet last November, but the document focused heavily on trade and investment. Of its seven pages, about two covered security, while most of the document dealt with trade issues such as Korea's $350 billion investment in the United States and tariff reductions.

For Seoul, the agreement effectively meant taking on a massive investment commitment in return for security gains, including approval for a nuclear-powered submarine and expanded rights related to uranium enrichment and spent nuclear fuel reprocessing. But Washington's decision to link implementation of the investment commitments to follow-up security negotiations now threatens to stall progress on those hard-won security agreements.

There had already been signs that trade tensions were spilling over into security.

Wi Sung-lac, national security adviser at the presidential office, described tariff and security negotiations as the “two pillars” of Korea-U.S. relations in an interview in February.

“One of those pillars — tariffs — has been shaken, and that has brought us to where we are now,” Wi said.

His remarks served as a warning that the tariff dispute was also delaying security discussions. The government subsequently maintained its approach of keeping the two areas as separate as possible and held the first round of follow-up talks on the security agreements in Seoul in June, led by First Vice Foreign Minister Park Yoon-joo.

But three months later, a date has yet to be set for the second round of talks. The government has attributed the delay to the U.S. State Department's limited capacity for negotiations amid the war in the Middle East and other issues.

“There have long been signs that the United States was linking security and trade, but we failed to pick up on them and kept asking for security talks, so its frustration is now being expressed more explicitly,” one source said. “The message has become clear that all Korea-U.S. issues are interconnected and that security cannot avoid being affected.”

The Korean government believes that view is shared across the U.S. administration, with the White House at the center, rather than being limited to individual agencies such as the State or Commerce departments.

President Lee Jae Myung also reportedly expressed frustration over the pressure for Korean investment in the United States and its spillover into the nuclear-powered submarine issue during a dinner with the ruling party's newly elected leadership Tuesday.

Washington has been pressing Korean companies to increase semiconductor investment in the United States, but the Korean government and companies say large-scale investment projects are already underway in the Honam region — the Jeolla provinces and Gwangju — and that commercial viability must also be taken into account.

“The semiconductor investment issue has recently become the main source of U.S. frustration,” a ruling bloc official said. “Amid the U.S.-China competition for dominance in AI, the United States has an urgent need for such investment. Washington feels that Korea is not meeting that need while asking it to move forward with security negotiations where the United States holds leverage.”

“It is concerning that the security negotiations could lose even more momentum if they are pushed beyond the U.S. midterm elections in November,” the official added.

Foreign Minister Cho is seeking to visit the United States next month for talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The two last met in person for bilateral talks in February.

Cho and Rubio also spoke by phone Monday and agreed to meet in person soon.

BY YOON JI-WON [[email protected]]