US-South Korea investment pledge dispute
One page that accretes the verified record as the story develops. Every fact keeps its date and its sources.
Report on South Korea's lagging US investment pledges
The United States and South Korea have held annual joint exercises for more than 70 years to deter threats from North Korea.
Pentagon leaders are considering plans to withdraw about 4,500 troops from South Korea for redeployment elsewhere in the Indo-Pacific region.
Trump threatened earlier this year to raise tariffs on South Korea from 15 percent to 25 percent over delays with its parliament approving the trade agreement, but the tariffs never took effect.
“When I called recently, the president of South Korea … I said, ‘Would you like to give us a little hand — we don’t need help with Iran, but if you’d like, give us a hand with Iran’ — he said, ‘no thanks,’ and I said, ‘What do you mean? We have 39,000 soldiers over there, guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? That’s strange,’”
Fact check of Trump's South Korea claim
Trump claimed Monday that South Korea convinced Biden that Trump was probably a bad person and that Biden immediately rescinded the order.
The 2024 agreement included an 8.3% increase in 2026 and additional increases from 2027 to 2030 tied to South Korean inflation.
Trump had delivered versions of the same story before, including one debunked by CNN last year.
“Just so you understand with South Korea, look: South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years, and during my first term, they agreed to pay close to $3 billion a year for protection, because we don’t – you know, they essentially weren’t paying.”