SEOUL, South Korea — South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who campaigned as a moderate after a career as a liberal firebrand, has conservative critics on edge, both at home and in Washington, ahead of a summit at the White House on Monday.
Mr. Lee will meet with President Trump at the White House after huddling in Tokyo Saturday with his Japanese counterpart, Premier Shigeru Ishiba.
Korean nerves have been tested by both Mr. Lee and Mr. Trump, who has not yet assigned an ambassador to Seoul, and Mr. Lee’s overdue trip to Washington — an invite had been anticipated last month after Mr. Lee took office in June — is being watched intently by both domestic supporters and critics skeptical of the lifelong liberal’s untested diplomatic skills.
However, his meet with Mr. Ishiba has earned good reviews, with the Asian neighbors agreeing to expand cooperation in security, trade, tourism and defense against North Korea.
That outcome is doubly surprising given Mr. Lee’s pre-presidential reputation as a Japanophobe who addressed anti-Tokyo rallies. More broadly, his transition from revolutionary to ruler has seen him U-turn sharply, ditching considerable political baggage from a leftist past.
The presidency came up for grabs after conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol shook Korea by declaring martial law in December 2024.
Opposition leader Mr. Lee, who had frustrated Mr. Yoon’s governance in the National Assembly, defied commandos to lead lawmakers in a vote that overturned the measure, dooming Mr. Yoon.
On Feb. 18, Mr. Lee strikingly announced that his liberal party must “take the center right” political ground.
If his aim was to reassure middle Korea — which, per polls, is firmly wedded to the U.S. alliance — it succeeded. With Mr. Yoon impeached, Mr. Lee won the June presidential election handily.
Saturday’s summit outcome shows that Mr. Lee is sticking to his new course.
Behind closed doors, the meeting also granted Mr. Lee the opportunity to “exchange views with Japan, which is facing similar challenges due to Mr. Trump’s demands for tariff pressure and alliance modernization,” wrote Lim Eun-jeong, an international relations professor at Kongju National University, in a vernacular commentary.
Stakes are high in Washington and upping pressure on Mr. Lee is a barrage of criticism from high-profile U.S. conservatives who are unconvinced he has ditched his left-wing past — and who may have Mr. Trump’s ear.
Coming to America
In the run-up to the summit, Mr. Lee conferred with major South Korean business leaders and deployed his foreign minister to Washington to lay last-minute groundwork.
Economically, detailed questions hover over the $350 billion in Korean investments Mr. Trump announced for the U.S., and over Korea’s role in maintaining or even building U.S. shipping and taking a stake in a mooted Alaskan LNG pipeline.
Even dicier issues are in play in security. Will Mr. Trump demand more cash — “burden sharing” — in return for the security afforded South Korea by the presence of American forces? Will Seoul assume wartime operational command of its troops — a move some believe would collapse the potent, U.S.-led Combined Forces Command?
Above all: Will Washington demand regional freedom of maneuver for U.S. forces stationed in strategically sited Korea, potentially freeing them for China-facing operations?
While negotiating these issues, Mr. Lee must convince Mr. Trump that his U.S. critics are off base.
They have dredged up a 2021 statement in which he called American GIs an “occupying force,” and are convinced he wants to dismantle the alliance. They accuse him of being pro-Chinese and pro-North Korean, and allege that the June presidential election was fraudulent.
On social media, some U.S. conservatives dub him a “communist.”
In fact, Mr. Lee has made clear, repeatedly, that the alliance is the “cornerstone” of his foreign policy. Joint South Korea-U.S. military drills are currently underway.
Though he seeks improved relations with Beijing, he has announced no major policy shift toward China. His only North Korea maneuver thus far has been halting cross-DMZ propaganda broadcasts and dismantling related gear.
He has expressed hopes of thawing ties with Pyongyang that froze in 2019, but Mr. Trump did precisely that in his first term.
Mr. Lee’s cabinet looks balanced. While his intelligence chief and unification minister are seen as pro-Pyongyang, his national security adviser and foreign minister are considered centrists.
Koreans remain onside. The most recent Gallup poll, on Aug. 22, gave the president approval ratings of 56% – a higher rate than Mr. Yoon achieved, and above Mr. Lee’s share of the national vote in June.
He won that with 49.42% — in line with pre-election opinion polling.
Though anti-Lee protesters rallied in central Seoul Saturday, Korea’s mainstream commentariat — its professional media, judiciary, academia and even the conservative People Power Party — all accept the election results.
Mr. Lee’s U.S. critics are now facing pushback.
In July, Korean activists filed a defamation lawsuit against U.S. academic Morse Tan. Mr. Tan has sought to visit the imprisoned Mr. Yoon, vocally promoted the idea of a “stolen” June election, and raised criminal allegations against Mr. Lee.
Mr. Tan was ambassador-at-large for Global Criminal Justice in Mr. Trump’s first administration.
Last week, Washington’s South Korean Embassy shot back at conservative author and China hawk Gordon Chang after he penned an anti-Lee column in The Hill, a Capitol Hill newspaper.
“Lee is virulently anti-American,” wrote Mr. Chang, who similarly criticized the previous liberal President Moon Jae-in. “At stake, therefore, is the future of the treaty relationship between Washington and Seoul.”
The embassy called the article “inaccurate and misleading,” stating that it was spreading “baseless accusations.”
In jittery Seoul, the exchange won attention from mainstream Seoul media, but U.S. analysts say Mr. Trump may be unmoved by criticism of Mr. Lee.
“The American conservatives most against Lee have a connection — familial, professional or otherwise — to the peninsula and to the alliance,” said Rob York, regional affairs director at Pacific Forum. “That does not sound like Trump’s inner circle to me.”
“Lee has been briefed up and knows what to say to Trump,” said Daniel Pinkston, who teaches international relations at Troy University.
He said Mr. Lee can learn from the example set by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy: “Zelenskyy got it.”
But risk remains. “A bad meeting will validate those in Lee’s party with less attachment to the alliance,” added Mr. York.
Going too far?
Mr. Lee is showing two faces domestically.
Unlike Mr. Yoon, he has met with the opposition, and last month, paid all adults vouchers worth $108 or more to bolster domestic consumption.
Korea boasts an unforgiving political culture, under which ex-presidents customarily suffer judicial punishment. Even by those standards, the campaign against Mr. Yoon and his wife — both of whom are detained, a first in South Korean judicial history — is unusually fierce.
With some prosecutors convinced Mr. Yoon sought to bolster martial law by generating tensions with the North, military commands have faced investigations — including the joint South Korea-U.S. air base at Osan.
Last month, prosecutors raided Osan, seeking data on an alleged South Korean drone intrusion over Pyongyang.
Amid multiple raids on military posts, churches and even the main opposition party, the Osan raid — reportedly on a Korean sector of the base, with no U.S. personnel encountered — generated little local news.
Even so, some Korean conservative media fret that it breached alliance protocols, and a civic group accused prosecutors of abusing their power.
Mr. Lee holds both the legislature and the executive branches of the South Korean government, and fears are that he may be seeking to control the judiciary.
Probes have been unleashed against churches that prosecutors believe may have colluded with Mr. Yoon or bribed his wife.
However, a controversial initiative to expand the Supreme Court’s bench — potentially packing it with judges sympathetic to Mr. Lee, who faces multiple criminal allegations and is likely to face massive legal attack if a conservative administration returns to power — is on hold.
