[Column] US and Korea: From an alliance of values to an alliance of extortion

US President Donald Trump announces Korean investments in the US from the Oval Office on Sept. 30, 2026. (EPA/Yonhap)

Kim Ji-hoon, international news reporter

How sustainable are South Korea’s massive investments in the United States? That was the question I put to Andrew Yeo, the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at the Brookings Institution, in Washington on Sept. 11. With growing concern in Korea that these investments could amount to de facto aid to the United States, I asked whether Korean taxpayers could ultimately be left financing long-sought American projects — such as the Alaska gas pipeline — without a realistic prospect of recovering even the principal.

My interview with Yeo was part of a bilateral media exchange organized by the US East-West Center and the Korea Press Foundation, involving some 20 experts from American think tanks.

He offered a blunt assessment: The Alaska gas pipeline project is not going to happen, he said, and Korea, Japan and Taiwan all know it. Previous US administrations pushed the venture, but it remains highly risky unless the US first commits substantial funding to the infrastructure and feasibility studies needed to demonstrate that it can actually work.

Unless the US proactively allocates major funding to demonstrate genuine commitment to this project, Yeo said, a better investment would be in other areas like Texas, where a gas-fired power plant is being built. If America sends a Democrat to the White House in 2028, he added, the potential for the venture’s termination could jeopardize its future.

Yet US President Donald Trump has defied these expectations. On Wednesday, he announced that Korea agreed to begin joint work on a US$50 billion liquefied natural gas (LNG) project in Alaska.

What is the Alaska LNG project? It seeks to build a 1,300 km pipeline to transport natural gas deposited in northern Alaska to a port near Anchorage in the south. In 2014, global energy giants like ExxonMobil and BP backed out of the project given the immense estimated costs of the challenging construction of a pipeline across the state’s permafrost, calling it economically unfeasible.

In a joint news release, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Resources and the US Department of Commerce said, “The United States and Korea have agreed to commence working on the Alaska LNG project, subject to meeting commercial reasonableness under the Strategic Investment MOU (memorandum of understanding) and all applicable domestic legal requirements.”

On the surface, this statement implies a possible halt to the process if commercial viability is found lacking. But is that really the case?

On Sept. 22, the Lee administration reported to the National Assembly that because the investment terms were not yet finalized, its final decision on proceeding with the project would come after further reviews of its commercial feasibility.

But Trump made a unilateral promise that day — acting as if the matter was decided —that the project would bring groundbreaking change for Alaska residents. Reference materials from the ministry even specified the start of construction, with a work timeline from 2027, while Trump is still in office, through 2031. Had anyone been able to stop him from pushing ahead with his decisions, things would never have reached this point in the first place.

While the unequal nature of the bilateral alliance is frequently and painfully underscored by Trump’s comments — which paint Korea as a little more than a money machine — seeing his blatant disregard for the relationship’s interests is humiliating.

Experts on bilateral ties say the US is shifting from a “values-based alliance” guided by shared liberal democratic ideals to a “transactional alliance,” in which treatment depends on a partner’s contributions.

But does such an unequal alliance even qualify as a transactional one? “Extortion” is the more accurate term, as shown by the US imposition of tariffs on absurd grounds followed by a demand that Korea pour money into a venture clearly expected to lose money in exchange for lowering such levies. Korea needs to take a hard look at how to prevent a situation like this from happening again.