Korean President Lee Jae Myung, right, shakes hands with U.S. President Donald Trump during a meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders' summit in Gyeongju on Oct. 29, 2025.REUTERS/YONHAP
Korea is falling far behind Japan in turning its U.S. investment pledge into actual projects — a gap that is drawing fresh scrutiny amid views that the slow progress is behind U.S. President Donald Trump's order to sharply reduce joint military exercises with Seoul.
Reuters reported Wednesday that Trump’s move may be aimed at more than reviving dialogue with Pyongyang. It could also give Washington leverage to press Seoul on its U.S. investment commitments.
Trump has publicly blamed the cost of the exercises and Korea’s refusal to join U.S. military action against Iran for his decision to scale them back. But the remarks suggest economic frustration with Seoul may also be simmering beneath the surface.
The gap is clearest in the pace of investment. Japan, which pledged $550 billion around the same time as Korea, has already unveiled six projects in two rounds this year. Together, they are worth up to $109 billion — roughly one-fifth of Japan’s total commitment.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, left, raises her fist while saying “Japan is back” as she delivers remarks during a dinner hosted by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House in Washington on March 19.REUTERS/YONHAP
The first three projects unveiled in February were: a $33 billion natural gas power plant in Portsmouth, Ohio; a $2.1 billion offshore crude oil export facility in Texas; and a $600 million industrial synthetic diamond plant in Georgia.
Japan followed up with additional investments just a month later.
During the U.S.-Japan summit on March 19, Tokyo unveiled plans to invest up to $40 billion in the construction of small modular reactors in Tennessee and Alabama and up to $33 billion in natural gas power facilities in Pennsylvania and Texas
A month was all it took for Japan to follow up with a more concrete picture of where and how much it planned to invest.
Korea, however, presents a strikingly different picture.
Seoul pledged $350 billion in U.S. investment as part of its tariff negotiations, but not a single project has been officially announced.
The state-managed Korea-U.S. Strategic Investment Corporation, tasked with overseeing $200 billion in strategic investment, was launched on June 18. The remaining $150 billion is earmarked for shipbuilding cooperation led by Korean companies.
The Korean government has maintained since early this year that the depreciation of the local currency and turbulence in the foreign exchange market made it difficult to begin investing in earnest during the first half of the year.
Speculation that memory chips could be tapped for Korea’s first strategic investment project in the United States was quickly dismissed by the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources, which said Tuesday that the reports were “not true.”
Seoul needs more time to measure the projects’ commercial viability, legal requirements and financing, according to sources inside and outside the Korean government.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, left, alongside U.S. President Donald Trump, reacts as she speaks to members of the military aboard the USS George Washington, an aircraft carrier docked at a U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan, on Oct. 28, 2025.AP/YONHAP
Washington, however, may have less patience when Japan is already moving ahead with their plans.
Japan has little room for complacency though. The six projects announced so far account for only about 20 percent of its $550 billion pledge. That leaves Tokyo with as much as $441 billion still to commit.
The pressure on Japan — including Trump’s demands for faster progress on investment — could intensify as the U.S. midterm elections draw closer, the Nikkei reported Tuesday.
“During his first term, Trump had a precedent of increasing pressure on allies on both security and economic fronts before the 2018 midterm elections,” the Japanese media outlet said. “The U.S. intervention, led by [U.S.] Treasury Secretary [Scott] Bessent, was clearly intended to urge the Bank of Japan to raise interest rates further in order to correct the weak yen and inflation.”
BY YOU SEONG-UN [lee.soojung1@joongang.co.kr]
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
