President Lee Jae-myung returned to Seoul on the 27th after a seven-day trip to the United States and Mexico that advanced security cooperation with U.S. President Donald Trump and broadened economic ties with Mexico. In a roughly 30-minute New York summit, Lee and Trump welcomed progress in strategic investment discussions and agreed to continue consultations on nuclear-powered submarine fuel, uranium enrichment and reprocessing, shipbuilding cooperation and wartime operational control. Lee also pledged to increase defense spending and accelerate discussions on greater responsibility for the Korean Peninsula’s defense. During Lee’s first state visit to Mexico by a Korean president in 16 years, he held 119 minutes of talks with President Claudia Sheinbaum. The countries concluded negotiations, stalled for seven years, to revise their investment protection treaty, adopted a 2026-2030 joint action plan and exchanged 17 cooperation documents. The revised treaty strengthens investor protections, including recovery of investment funds, compensation for losses and fund transfers during a foreign-exchange crisis. The visit also produced plans to explore Korean defense companies’ participation in Mexico’s military modernization, including groundwork for a possible FA-50 aircraft export, while Korean companies signed agreements covering aerospace, automotive materials, artificial intelligence, space, agriculture and other sectors. Lee presented visions of peaceful coexistence on the Korean Peninsula at the U.N. General Assembly and promoted Korea’s economic prospects to global financial leaders on Wall Street.