US President Donald Trump declares Korean investments within the US from the Oval Workplace on Sept. 30, 2026. (EPA/Yonhap)
Kim Ji-hoon, worldwide information reporter
How sustainable are South Korea’s huge investments in the USA? That was the query I put to Andrew Yeo, the SK-Korea Basis Chair in Korea Research on the Brookings Establishment, in Washington on Sept. 11. With rising concern in Korea that these investments may quantity to de facto support to the USA, I requested whether or not Korean taxpayers may finally be left financing long-sought American initiatives — such because the Alaska fuel pipeline — with out a lifelike prospect of recovering even the principal.
My interview with Yeo was a part of a bilateral media change organized by the US East-West Middle and the Korea Press Basis, involving some 20 consultants from American assume tanks.
He supplied a blunt evaluation: The Alaska fuel pipeline mission is just not going to occur, he stated, and Korea, Japan and Taiwan all realize it. Earlier US administrations pushed the enterprise, however it stays extremely dangerous except the US first commits substantial funding to the infrastructure and feasibility research wanted to reveal that it might really work.
Until the US proactively allocates main funding to reveal real dedication to this mission, Yeo stated, a greater funding could be in different areas like Texas, the place a gas-fired energy plant is being constructed. If America sends a Democrat to the White Home in 2028, he added, the potential for the enterprise’s termination may jeopardize its future.
But US President Donald Trump has defied these expectations. On Wednesday, he introduced that Korea agreed to start joint work on a US$50 billion liquefied pure fuel (LNG) mission in Alaska.
What’s the Alaska LNG mission? It seeks to construct a 1,300 km pipeline to move pure fuel deposited in northern Alaska to a port close to Anchorage within the south. In 2014, international vitality giants like ExxonMobil and BP backed out of the mission given the immense estimated prices of the difficult development of a pipeline throughout the state’s permafrost, calling it economically unfeasible.
In a joint information launch, the Ministry of Commerce, Business and Sources and the US Division of Commerce stated, “The US and Korea have agreed to start engaged on the Alaska LNG mission, topic to assembly industrial reasonableness underneath the Strategic Funding MOU (memorandum of understanding) and all relevant home authorized necessities.”
On the floor, this assertion implies a attainable halt to the method if industrial viability is discovered missing. However is that actually the case?
On Sept. 22, the Lee administration reported to the Nationwide Meeting that as a result of the funding phrases weren’t but finalized, its closing resolution on continuing with the mission would come after additional critiques of its industrial feasibility.
However Trump made a unilateral promise that day — appearing as if the matter was determined —that the mission would deliver groundbreaking change for Alaska residents. Reference supplies from the ministry even specified the beginning of development, with a piece timeline from 2027, whereas Trump continues to be in workplace, via 2031. Had anybody been capable of cease him from pushing forward along with his selections, issues would by no means have reached this level within the first place.
Whereas the unequal nature of the bilateral alliance is often and painfully underscored by Trump’s feedback — which paint Korea as just a little greater than a cash machine — seeing his blatant disregard for the connection’s pursuits is humiliating.
Specialists on bilateral ties say the US is shifting from a “values-based alliance” guided by shared liberal democratic beliefs to a “transactional alliance,” during which therapy is determined by a accomplice’s contributions.
However does such an unequal alliance even qualify as a transactional one? “Extortion” is the extra correct time period, as proven by the US imposition of tariffs on absurd grounds adopted by a requirement that Korea pour cash right into a enterprise clearly anticipated to lose cash in change for decreasing such levies. Korea must take a tough take a look at stop a scenario like this from occurring once more.
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