Announced Before Agreement Reached... "South Korea to Invest in Alaska LNG"

[Anchor]

U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced projects in which South Korea will invest. In doing so, he presented South Korea's investment in the Alaska LNG project—which the South Korean government has not yet decided on—as a fait accompli.

From Washington, correspondent Lee Hanseok reports.

[Reporter]

[Donald Trump / U.S. President: Today, we are very excited to announce the largest energy infrastructure investment plan in U.S. history.]

Hailing it as the success of his tariff policies and investment agreements, U.S. President Trump listed three projects that will kick off with up to $200 billion—approximately 280 trillion won—that South Korea has decided to invest in the United States.

[Donald Trump / U.S. President: The South Korean government is investing up to $200 billion. We are building a 6-gigawatt power plant in Texas, constructing eight new large-scale nuclear reactors, and finally, the Alaska LNG pipeline will also be built.]

In addition to a combined-cycle gas turbine power plant in Texas and eight nuclear power plants, he unilaterally finalized and announced even the Alaska LNG project, which the South Korean government has yet to decide on due to uncertain profitability.

Furthermore, he posted on social media that he met with President Lee Jae-myung in New York and agreed on the "beginning of investments" worth $200 billion, while specifying the Alaska project as a "$50 billion scale," thereby pressing South Korea.

Trump made no secret of his intention to support Republican senators locked in tight races with Democratic candidates in Alaska, mentioning that 13,000 jobs would be created and even handing the floor over to an Alaska senator.

Commerce Secretary Lutnick also named swing states as potential sites for the nuclear power plants.

[Howard Lutnick / U.S. Secretary of Commerce: The nuclear power plants are scheduled to be built in Ohio, Tennessee, South Carolina, and Kentucky.]

However, the U.S. Department of Commerce's official announcement differed from Trump's remarks.

The official release specified that the U.S. and South Korea agreed to undertake the Alaska project, subject to meeting commercial viability and all legal requirements.

Analysts suggest that this reflects Trump's political calculations to maximize domestic economic achievements ahead of the midterm elections in November.

(Video by Oh Jung-shik | Video Editing by Park Choon-bae)

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