Experts discuss implications of Lee-Trump summit at JoongAng-CSIS Forum

This article is by Michael Lee and read by an artificial voice.

Hours after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung met U.S. President Donald Trump in Washington, officials and experts gathered at the Shilla Hotel in Seoul on Tuesday to discuss what their summit revealed - and what it left unsaid - about the future of the South Korea-U.S. alliance.
The 14th JoongAng-CSIS Forum, co-hosted by the JoongAng Ilbo and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), quickly turned into a broader debate over the credibility of U.S. security commitments, the shifting balance of power in Asia and other pressures on the partnership between Seoul and Washington.

In his welcoming remarks, JoongAng Holdings Chairman Hong Seok-hyun said Trump's second term represents not just a continuation of his "America First" agenda from his first term, but a push to remake the world order to serve Washington's interests.
He also warned that "the Asia we are living in is a field for competition," adding that Trump's instincts - skepticism of international institutions, withdrawal from agreements and reliance on hard power - pose challenges for South Korea, which has depended on American security guarantees for more than 70 years.
Deterrence, dialogue and North Korea
Few issues consumed more attention at the forum than how to balance deterrence and diplomacy on the Korean Peninsula.

"Peace is cheaper than war," said former U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis, echoing Lee's main argument about the need to lower inter-Korean tensions. But Mattis noted that "deterrence is also cheaper than war" as he tied the peninsula's future to broader geopolitical struggles, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine and tensions over Taiwan. He criticized China's increasingly aggressive posture in the South China Sea, arguing that democracies must unite to defend the rule of international law.
Mattis also commended Lee for meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba before his summit with Trump. Repeating the mantra "allies, allies, allies," he underscored that joint deterrence depends on seamless coordination among democracies - particularly among Seoul, Washington and Tokyo.
Unification Minister Chung Dong-young, who represented the Korean government at Tuesday's forum, described the two presidents' meeting as a potential "historic turning point" in the deep freeze of inter-Korean relations. He praised Trump's support for Lee's pursuit of lower tensions with North Korea and an end to the decades-long cycle of division and hostility on the peninsula.
Yet doubts lingered. Some participants suggested that Washington under Trump might recognize Pyongyang as a nuclear power in direct talks, thereby undermining South Korea's goal of instituting weapons controls and eventually denuclearizing the North.
Others, such as Sydney Seiler, a former U.S. national intelligence officer for North Korea at the National Intelligence Council, warned that talks between the United States and North Korea should proceed from "credible" proposals that all parties could realistically accept.
CSIS President John Hamre also warned South Korea and the United States against "proposing the same solutions for the same problem" posed by the North's nuclear weapons program and "yet hoping for a different outcome."
Alliance at a crossroads
The forum repeatedly circled back to one theme: how the U.S.-Korea alliance should adapt to shifting realities.
Hamre said the partners must define what a credible U.S. defense commitment actually looks like. "We need a visible deterrence strategy," he said, "not just words of reassurance."

The debate over "strategic flexibility" - whether American forces in Korea might be deployed to other contingencies in the region - underscored differences between the allies regarding the mission of the U.S. military presence. Some argued that flexibility is necessary to counter China with an Indo-Pacific posture, while others warned that it risks entangling Sou...