Lee Jae-myung, the winner of South Korea’s June 3 election, made his first overseas trip this week to attend the Group of Seven (G7) summit in Alberta, Canada.
South Korea is not one of the G7 nations, which include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Lee was invited to attend by the host of the summit, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Carney was among the G7 leaders who held bilateral meetings with the new South Korean president during his visit.
Lee had hoped to meet with President Donald Trump in Alberta, but Trump left the summit early to return to Washington due to the conflict between Israel and Iran. Lee’s office said on Wednesday he still hopes for a bilateral meeting with Trump to discuss trade and tariffs, possibly on the sidelines of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in the Netherlands on June 24 and 25.
Lee won the presidency in a special election held to replace President Yoon Suk-yeol who was impeached and removed from office after attempting to impose martial law in December. Lee was reportedly reluctant to leave Seoul so early in his term for the G7 summit, but decided to attend so he could offer reassurances that South Korea’s political crisis is behind it.
“It was a meaningful opportunity to signal the restoration of the democracy of the Republic of Korea. Most of the leaders President Lee met with highly praised our recovery of democracy following the recent domestic crisis,” Lee’s national security adviser Wi Sung-lac said at a press conference on Tuesday.
Lee also evidently wanted to ensure South Korea was represented at the summit because he hopes to join the G7, or the “G7 Plus,” as it would likely be called if the members decide to invite more nations, much as the China-led BRICS economic bloc recently expanded its roster.
The G7 actually expanded once before, accepting a new member in 1997 and redubbing itself the “G8.” Unfortunately, that new member was Russia, which got kicked out of the group seven years later when it illegally annexed Crimea.
The Russians are still sore about this, sneering on Tuesday that the G7 has become “dull and rather useless” in the years since Moscow was expelled. President Trump said during his appearance at the summit on Monday that it was a “big mistake” for the G7 to evict Russia because President Vladimir Putin might have been persuaded not to invade Ukraine if Russia had remained a member.
Some of Lee’s domestic critics said he should have stuck to his earlier instincts and skipped the G7 summit to work on issues in South Korea, while his international critics felt his appearance at the G7 was uninspiring, especially since Trump left before his planned meeting with Lee — and did not warn Lee in advance that he was leaving.
There are also concerns that the left-wing Lee will be too friendly to China and North Korea, especially if he feels overlooked or marginalized by Trump. Lee’s lack of foreign policy experience was an issue during his campaign, which he sought to neutralize by hiring seasoned foreign policy professionals — such as national security adviser Wi Sung-lac, who was formerly South Korea’s ambassador to Russia.
Lee made a point of discussing North Korean security issues with G7 leaders, including Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
“Amid the seismic shift in the world’s economic security landscape, South Korea actively engaged in discussions over global current affairs while manifesting its visions and roles,” Wi said at his press conference on Tuesday.
One of the ideas Lee presented to the G7 summit was turning South Korea into the word’s “leading artificial intelligence hub,” using tax relief, regulatory reform, and a massive private-sector investment fund to carry out a “nationwide A.I. transformation.”
Lee told G7 leaders his government will take steps to improve South Korea’s energy infrastructure to meet the massive power demands of A.I. while securing reliable sources of rare earth minerals needed by the industry.
