Victor Cha says Korea-US foreign ministers' meeting likely to trigger first US investment announcement

South Korea's first project under its US investment package — whose announcement has been delayed — could be unveiled at the upcoming South Korea-US foreign ministers' meeting, a prominent analyst said.

Victor Cha, the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Thursday (local time) at a CSIS-hosted seminar that he had expected an announcement on the investment deal itself to come Friday but no longer believed that would happen. "Foreign Minister Cho Hyun is on his way to Washington, D.C. right now. He is expected to arrive here on Friday," Cha said. "Perhaps we will see some form of announcement on this matter there."

Cha acknowledged that some had suggested the issue could slip to next week, but said Foreign Minister Cho's visit would serve as an "action-forcing event." "I am quite certain that if no announcement comes while Minister Cho is here, that would be a very bad sign," he said.

South Korea's Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy had planned to sign a memorandum of understanding for the first project under the country's $200 billion US investment package and announce the project as early as Friday, following a National Assembly briefing. However, the ministry asked Thursday to postpone the Assembly briefing, suggesting the project's finalization and announcement would likely be pushed to next week.

Foreign Minister Cho arrived in the United States Thursday morning for talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio. The two ministers are scheduled to meet Friday morning.

"I think we will probably see some form of announcement on this issue at that point," Cha said, referring to the foreign ministers' meeting. "By the time Minister Cho arrives and departs, both sides need to reach some form of agreement."

Some observers cautioned that it remained unclear whether the ministers' meeting would clinch an investment deal, noting there were no reports that the two sides had fully bridged their differences. Cha suggested that President Donald Trump's stance on what he called "commercial disputes" — including issues involving Coupang Inc. and amendments to South Korea's Network Act — could be used as a lever to force an agreement.

"My understanding is that Rubio plans to raise some of these commercial disputes directly with Minister Cho during this visit," Cha said. "The most important point is that there is a difference between Rubio raising the issue and Rubio saying, 'The president is very unhappy about this.'"

"These commercial disputes don't necessarily have to be resolved through legal means — there are political solutions," he said. "To create space for such solutions, the Korean side needs to understand that the US president is very unhappy about these issues."

Cha also argued that resolving some of the bigger issues — such as the investment deal — "could help create political space to handle other matters, like the commercial disputes, quietly behind the scenes."

Cha noted that Cho's US visit comes ahead of the UN General Assembly, where a South Korea-US summit is possible amid discussions about South Korea's potential deployment to the Strait of Hormuz and a possible North Korea-US summit. Beyond a trade deal, the two countries have also been in talks on shipbuilding cooperation in the defense sector, South Korea's acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines, and the enrichment and reprocessing of spent nuclear material — issues that could be raised as part of a broader package tied to the investment announcement.

"If these kinds of linkages are made across different issues, the situation becomes very unpredictable — because there is only one person who can make those decisions," Cha said, referring to President Trump. He added that progress on even one of those fronts could "open space to resolve other thorny and complicated issues quietly below the surface."