South Korea’s Lee to visit Americas, Germany, and U.S. AI summit

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung is set to travel from July 24 to Aug. 3 to San Francisco, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Germany, a schedule that ties together trade diplomacy, energy talks and a push into the global AI race. The trip will also include an AI summit in the United States, placing Seoul’s technology agenda at the center of a multistop foreign-policy tour.

The itinerary shows Lee using one journey to work several fronts at once. South Korea’s presidential office said the trip will include meetings aimed at boosting cooperation in AI, trade and energy, while later summaries said the South American leg could include discussions on the South Korea-Mercosur trade agreement and energy cooperation. The route through Brazil, Chile and Argentina gives Seoul a chance to deepen ties across Latin America before Lee moves on to Germany, a major industrial economy and a key partner for advanced manufacturing and supply chains.

The U.S. stop in San Francisco is expected to be the sharpest signal of Lee’s technology push. Follow-up reporting said he may meet leading figures in the AI sector, including Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman, alongside other executives. The trip may also bring a business delegation that includes Samsung Electronics chairman Jay Y. Lee, SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won and Hyundai Motor Group chairman Euisun Chung, underscoring that the mission is meant to blend diplomacy with corporate outreach and trade promotion.

For Seoul, the timing matters. AI policy is increasingly tied to semiconductors, cloud infrastructure, export competitiveness and the future of advanced manufacturing, all areas in which South Korea has major stakes. A stop in Germany reinforces that point, since Berlin remains one of the world’s most important industrial centers and a natural counterpart for a country that relies on advanced exports and integrated supply chains. The South American leg broadens that strategy further, signaling that South Korea is trying to avoid overdependence on any single bloc or market.

Lee has already made AI a recurring theme in his foreign policy. At the G7 summit in June, he called for global cooperation on AI and, in remarks carried by Korea.net, said South Korea aimed to share AI with the world. He also held a summit with Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on AI and tech cooperation on March 2, showing that the July tour extends a pattern of pairing diplomacy with technology policy. In Evian, France, at the G7 summit, Lee also had a brief encounter with Donald Trump, another sign that AI, trade and alliance management are increasingly converging in the same diplomatic calendar.