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.
Fact check of Trump's South Korea claim
Under a one-year Special Measures Agreement negotiated by the Trump administration in 2019, South Korea agreed to an 8.2% increase in spending, with a new total of less than $1 billion.
CNN said Trump lost the 2020 election to Biden and that his rigging claim was a lie.
Trump claimed Monday that the 2020 election was rigged.
“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.”
Report on South Korea's lagging US investment pledges
Three people familiar with the discussions said Trump's move to pull back from South Korean military exercises was driven in part by frustration over the pace of Seoul's $350 billion investment pledge.
Korean regulators fined American e-commerce firm Coupang more than $400 million in June.
South Korean trade minister Kim said Sunday that the two countries are considering announcing new investment pledges at the end of August or early September, according to the Korea Herald.
“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,’”