'Hormuz, U.S. Investment'—South Korea-U.S. Diplomacy Hits a Critical Juncture... Can the UN General Assembly Help Break the Impasse?

[Financial News] With President Lee Jae Myung expected to attend the United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 22 local time to discuss peace on the Korean Peninsula, some observers believe he could hold an unexpected face-to-face meeting with President Trump. Attention is also focused on whether discussions over South Korea's deployment to Hormuz and its No. 1 investment in the United States will continue in New York following the South Korea-U.S. foreign ministers' meeting in Washington, D.C.
The announcement of the No. 1 U.S. investment was put on hold because of additional demands from the U.S. side. Meanwhile, the deployment of South Korean troops to Hormuz, which U.S. President Donald Trump has been demanding, is being narrowed to the dispatch of non-combat personnel.
After concluding talks with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, D.C., on September 18 local time, Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is expected to travel to New York and continue follow-up discussions. Cho failed to reach an agreement on the deployment to Hormuz and investment in the United States during the South Korea-U.S. foreign ministers' meeting in Washington, D.C. The two countries have also clashed over various diplomatic and security issues, including the dispute involving Coupang.
Meanwhile, the foreign ministers of South Korea, the United States, and Japan are reportedly expected to meet in New York on September 21 and sign an MOU on economic security cooperation to establish a working group tentatively named the "Arctic-Pacific Trilateral Partnership."
The agreement is intended to secure supply chains for energy resources such as oil and natural gas buried in the Arctic region and to counter, through a multilateral cooperation framework, the data sovereignty over the Northern Sea Route (NSR) in which China and Russia have taken the lead.
The South Korean government has been engaged in last-minute negotiations, holding options such as the construction of gas combined-cycle power plants in Texas and the Alaska LNG project as leading ways to fulfill its investment commitments in the United States, while targeting power shortages caused by the rapid increase in data centers there. Meanwhile, the U.S. side is reportedly strongly demanding that Samsung Electronics and SK hynix build semiconductor plants and expand production in the United States, adding to the pressure on the South Korean government.

[email protected] Kim Kyung-soo Reporter