South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is nearing the end of the longest overseas trip of his 14-month presidency, an 11-day swing that carried him from Silicon Valley’s technology corridor to the mineral-rich economies of South America. Lee, who took office in June 2025, opened the tour with investment pledges from four of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, then flew on to Brazil and Chile where he secured trade and critical-mineral commitments from both countries.
In the following days, he will head to Buenos Aires, the capital of Argentina, to have a summit meeting with Argentine President Javier Milei prior to his final stop in Frankfurt, Germany next week.
The Latin American leg marked Lee’s first tour of the region. The presidential Blue House has framed the trip as part of broader “Global South diplomacy” push that is central to diversifying South Korea’s trade and diplomatic ties beyond the United States, China, and Japan. Brazil, Chile, and Argentina together form a market of some 280 million people with a combined gross domestic product of $3.7 trillion, roughly the size of the world’s seventh-largest economy, according to Seoul. Brazil and Argentina anchor Mercosur, the four-nation South American trade bloc that also includes Paraguay and Uruguay. The Lee administration has spent years trying to negotiate a trade agreement with the bloc.
