South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is nearing the top of the longest abroad journey of his 14-month presidency, an 11-day swing that carried him from Silicon Valley’s expertise hall to the mineral-rich economies of South America. Lee, who took workplace in June 2025, opened the tour with funding pledges from 4 of the world’s main synthetic intelligence firms, then flew on to Brazil and Chile the place he secured commerce and critical-mineral commitments from each international locations.
Within the following days, he’ll head to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, to have a summit assembly with Argentine President Javier Milei previous to his last cease in Frankfurt, Germany subsequent week.
The Latin American leg marked Lee’s first tour of the area. The presidential Blue Home has framed the journey as a part of broader “International South diplomacy” push that’s central to diversifying South Korea’s commerce and diplomatic ties past america, China, and Japan. Brazil, Chile, and Argentina collectively kind a market of some 280 million individuals with a mixed gross home product of $3.7 trillion, roughly the scale of the world’s seventh-largest economic system, in response to Seoul. Brazil and Argentina anchor Mercosur, the four-nation South American commerce bloc that additionally contains Paraguay and Uruguay. The Lee administration has spent years attempting to barter a commerce settlement with the bloc.
Lee started the journey on July 24 with separate conferences in San Francisco with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Broadcom President and CEO Hock Tan. Kim Yong-beom, the coverage chief for Lee, stated the conferences had been meant to advance South Korea’s three flagship megaprojects – a authorities funding push spanning semiconductors, AI knowledge facilities and bodily AI that Lee introduced earlier in his time period.
Talking on the San Francisco AI Summit on July 25, Lee outlined plans for South Korea to function a secure provide base for AI infrastructure even amid a worldwide chip scarcity. He unveiled what his workplace known as the San Francisco Declaration on AI, pledging that the nation “will grow to be a trusted manufacturing base and supply-chain companion for AI chips.”
South Korean and U.S. firms translated the summit into offers price a mixed $950 billion over 5 years, headlined by a five-year, $200 billion association between Samsung Electronics and Broadcom for the availability of superior reminiscence chips utilized in AI accelerators. Lee additionally met with representatives of six Silicon Valley enterprise capital companies at an funding meetup on July 25, the place the Nationwide Pension Service individually signed a memorandum of understanding with a bunch of world enterprise capital companies to construct channels into Silicon Valley startups.
Lee arrived in Brazil on July 26 for a state go to on the invitation of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. It was Lee’s fifth assembly with Lula and the primary state go to by a Korean chief to Brazil since Park Geun-hye’s in 2015. The 2 leaders held a summit on July 27 on the Alvorada Palace the place they adopted a joint assertion declaring 2026 the founding yr of an upgraded strategic partnership between the 2 international locations. South Korea and Brazil signed seven memoranda of understanding spanning industrial expertise, house, vitality, sports activities, schooling, movie, and cybersecurity.
The leaders additionally agreed to kind a joint working group aiming to renew long-stalled negotiations on the Korea-Mercosur commerce settlement, with a goal of restarting talks by December. Brazil, which holds the world’s second-largest reserves of uncommon earth components at roughly 21 million tons, emerged as a central focus of Lee’s bigger tour, with officers citing essential mineral provide chains among the many summit’s primary outcomes.
On July 29, Lee arrived in Santiago, Chile, changing into the primary South Korean president to go to Chile since Park’s South America tour 11 years in the past. At a joint information convention the next day, Lee and Chilean President Jose Antonio Kast agreed to revive the South Korea-Chile Free Commerce Fee for the primary time in a decade and to modernize their free commerce settlement, which took impact in 2004. Lee stated the 2 sides had agreed to develop commerce and funding ties in pursuit of shared development. The 2 governments additionally signed 5 memoranda of understanding on essential minerals and combating transnational crime, together with a partnership that elevates a joint minerals committee to the ministerial stage to assist safe copper and lithium provides price roughly $2.1 billion a yr.
Lee is scheduled to meet Argentina’s Milei on July 31 on the Casa Rosada presidential palace, following a wreath-laying ceremony at Plaza San Martín. It’s the primary bilateral go to by a Korean president to Argentina in 22 years. Seoul stated forward of the assembly that the go to was anticipated to construct a provide chain partnership round lithium, of which Argentina holds the world’s fourth-largest reserves, together with vitality and meals safety cooperation.
Lee is scheduled to shut out the journey with a gathering with the Korean group in Frankfurt on August 2, earlier than returning to Seoul the next day.
