On August 25, President Lee Jae Myung of the Republic of Korea (ROK) and President Trump met at the White House for their first summit. While no comprehensive deal on trade or military questions were reached, the meeting firmly established that Lee will not challenge Washington, and that the Korean bourgeoisie will collaborate with US imperialism to plunder South Korea’s economy at the expense of Korean workers. At this time, there is an urgent need for our movement to reaffirm the principles necessary to achieve independence, liberation, and peace.
Washington cannot be trusted to lead diplomacy with the DPRK
At their meeting, President Lee lavished praise on President Trump, and even conceded the leading role in diplomacy with the DPRK to Washington, saying, “the only person who can make progress on this issue is you, Mr. President.” Trump responded by expressing his intention to meet with Kim Jong Un by the end of this year.
Since his return to office, Trump has often said that he would restart dialogue with Pyongyang. However, Washington’s approach is not rooted in genuine diplomacy, nor is it guided by a desire for peaceful coexistence with the DPRK. Since the collapse of talks with the US during the 2019 Hanoi Summit in Trump’s first term, the DPRK has made it clear that it will not return to negotiations under the same conditions. The rejection is not arbitrary, it stems directly from Washington’s two-faced approach: dangling the prospect of peace while tightening sanctions, conducting war drills, and demanding unilateral disarmament. In spite of history, the US continues to insist on denuclearization as a precondition for dialogue – the very stance that guarantees no talks will succeed.
Simultaneously, US war threats in Korea have only grown in frequency and magnitude, with joint military exercises now consuming the majority of the year. The US Forces Korea conducted 200 days of war games in 2023, 275 days of war games 2024, and are expected to set a new record for 2025. Even the recently concluded Ulchi Freedom Shield annual military exercises – while officially “scaled back” – still rehearsed OPLAN 5022, the latest US-ROK operational plan for regime change in the DPRK. Trump may clamor loudly for peace, but one only needs to examine where his administration allocates resources and effort to grasp its real priorities. Whereas endless time and treasure are expended on preparations for war, hardly any effort is put towards making dialogue with Pyongyang achievable. US calls for diplomacy are disingenuous, and serve only to mask its true strategy of destabilization and regime change.
Lee, too, has pledged to pursue diplomacy with the DPRK, but his actions have only reinforced Pyongyang’s mistrust. At the White House, Lee applauded Trump and confirmed that Seoul remains a subordinate partner to Washington rather than an independent actor. These actions only deepen Pyongyang’s mistrust, as it causes the DPRK to see the ROK as an unreliable diplomatic partner. Lee had an opportunity to delink his government’s diplomatic efforts from Washington’s and to break from this failed approach. Instead, he chose subservience and ceded leadership on diplomacy to Trump. Until the ROK asserts real independence, it will be impossible to create the conditions for true dialogue, and Seoul’s pronouncements on peace, diplomacy, and reunification will remain hollow.
All US economic demands on the ROK are forms of plunder
The Trump-Lee summit laid bare how one-sided the US-ROK economic relationship has become. In the lead-up, the ROK accepted a 15% tariff on its exports to the US, and pledged to invest $350 billion into US industry, while purchasing $100 billion in US liquified natural gas. The US has also imposed, or threatened to impose tariffs on other critical sectors of the ROK’s industrial economy, such as steel, semiconductors, and automobiles. US exports to the ROK, by contrast, will face no tariff barriers.
At the same time, Trump has pushed to increase the ROK’s annual payments to the US under the Special Measures Agreement, which splits the costs of the US occupation between the two governments, from just over $1 billion a year to $10 billion a year. Additionally, his administration has demanded the ROK raise its defense spending to 5% of GDP, which would bring the military budget from $48 billion to $87 billion. It is expected that much of this increased spending would be dedicated to purchasing US-made weapons.
All these financial commitments – whether through tariffs, military spending, or industrial investment – amount to transfers of wealth from Korean workers into the pockets of US financiers and arms manufacturers. These are forms of plunder. Further, these deals will seek to de-develop the ROK and increase its dependency on the US – in an effort to reshore industrial capacity to the US For the ROK’s monopoly capitalists, the costs are tolerable; for the working population, this will mean rising unemployment, falling wages, austerity, and long-term economic calamity, with echoes of the 1997 IMF Crisis.
In the lead-up to President Lee’s visit to Washington, organized workers made numerous calls for him to stand up in defense of the interests of working people. However, instead of resisting, Lee capitulated further. Beyond the $350 billion already pledged, he presided over $150 billion more in private-sector contracts, and promised an increase in defense spending. Disgracefully, many of these deals deepened South Korea’s entanglement with the US arms industry, turning Korean labor and resources into fuel for Washington’s wars. The most crucial of these may be the new deal between Korea Zinc and Lockheed Martin to establish a “China-free” supply of germanium, a strategic mineral with critical military applications in the production of weapons used to slaughter people around the world, including in Gaza.
Lee and his supporters may argue that ceding to Trump’s demands will smooth negotiations later, but the opposite is true. Five days before Lee’s arrival in Washington, Secretary of Commerce Lutnick floated the idea that the US government could forcibly acquire stakes in global chipmakers, including in Samsung. During Lee’s visit itself, Lutnick reinforced this pressure, and hinted that more demands to open ROK markets would come. Appeasement only emboldens Washington. Far from securing Korea’s interests, Lee has only deepened its subordination and accelerated US imperialist plunder.
Korea cannot be a war base for the US in the region
As a candidate Lee vowed to repair relations with China, which had been severely damaged by the previous Yoon administration. However, Lee’s visit to Washington exposed the hollowness of “pragmatic diplomacy.” After meeting with Trump, Lee delivered a keynote address to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading US think tank that shapes imperialist policy. There, Lee stated that, “the backdrop and the backbone of pragmatic diplomacy centered on national interest is the ROK-US alliance.” By declaring that South Korea’s national interests are inseparable from the US-ROK alliance, Lee effectively abandoned the pursuit of an independent foreign policy.
Furthermore, Lee pledged to “further strengthen” the Japan-Korea-US (JAKUS) trilateral military alliance – despite having once sharply criticized Yoon for the same policy. Far from enhancing security, the JAKUS alliance is polarizing Northeast Asia into military blocs, triggering the DPRK-Russia strategic partnership, and deepening the line of division in the region that cuts across the Korean Peninsula. The result is not a more secure regional environment, but one that is primed for imminent war.
Yet there are still further risks to come. The Trump administration has signaled its intent to redefine the US-ROK alliance and the role of US forces in Korea, making the peninsula a forward base for operations against China in the region. This shift would effectively strip the ROK of any power to refuse to join a US war on China, as its territory would be used as Washington’s forwardmost base. If Lee continues to concede to Washington, as he has with nearly every other issue, he risks leading Korea into catastrophe.
Sovereignty will not come through subservience
Lee often refers to his government as one of “popular sovereignty,” but his visit to Washington proves he has no right to use this term. At every turn, Lee deferred to the US as the dominant actor. He surrendered leadership on inter-Korean affairs to Trump, brokered the plundering of the ROK’s economy at the expense of its workers, and backed away from the opportunity to assert a more independent presence on the world stage. These capitulations have not, and will not, reduce US demands.
The Trump administration is using tariffs to exact tribute from the ROK, and is working to open more of the ROK’s markets to foreign capital. Washington’s confrontation with China is also forcing a renegotiation of the US-ROK alliance that would make South Korea’s participation in a US-China war virtually inevitable. These pressures reflect global political shifts: as US power declines, it heightens its exploitation and military aggression in Korea and the wider region.
Korea now stands at a crossroads: to stay chained to US imperialism as it drives towards calamity, or to chart an independent course. Only a mass movement for popular sovereignty – one that places power in the hands of working people – can navigate this storm. We in the diaspora have our role to play: resist US imperialism where we are, stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our people, and widen the reach of our struggle. Generations and distance cannot sever our connection, and we will march to liberation through every obstacle and trial.