Lee wraps up 5-night, 7-day US and Mexico tour, heads home

President Lee Jae Myung departed for Seoul on Saturday (local time), wrapping up a five-night, seven-day tour of the United States and Mexico. Aboard the presidential aircraft, Lee was expected to review the outcomes of his summit diplomacy — including his meeting with US President Donald Trump — and map out steps to translate them into concrete results.

Lee arrived in New York on Monday and delivered South Korea's keynote address at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday.

In his address, Lee said he would work to lay the groundwork for the resumption of North Korea-US dialogue and its development into direct talks among the parties concerned, aimed at ending the war on the Korean Peninsula and establishing a peace regime, pledging to pursue multilateral dialogue toward that end.

On the global energy supply chain crisis and related challenges, he proposed broadening cooperation through solidarity among "constructive contributing nations."

Later that day, Lee held a roughly 30-minute summit with Trump, during which the two leaders discussed bilateral cooperation on nuclear submarine fuel, uranium enrichment and reprocessing, shipbuilding, and the transfer of wartime operational control.

Moving on to Mexico, Lee met with President Claudia Sheinbaum on Friday and adopted the "2026–2030 Korea-Mexico Joint Action Plan."

The state visit also yielded a breakthrough in negotiations to revise a bilateral investment promotion and protection agreement between South Korea and Mexico — talks that had been stalled for seven years.