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Rubio, Motegi and Cho met in New York Monday for their third trilateral sit-down since July, with a draft Arctic cooperation memorandum establishing an "Arctic-Pacific Trilateral Partnership" among the expected deliverables.
- The meeting landed three days before Trump hosts Xi Jinping at the White House for their second summit of 2026, against a backdrop of Chinese rare-earth export curbs on Japan.
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Alliance strains persist: President Lee Jae-myung is refusing combat troops for the Hormuz mission as his approval rating hits a record-low 37%, and Seoul's $350 billion U.S. investment pledge remains stuck over how nuclear-reactor profits would be split.
Marco Rubio, Toshimitsu Motegi and Cho Hyun sat down together in New York on Monday for their third trilateral meeting since July, timing the conversation to United Nations General Assembly week and using it to lock in the kind of steady, working-level contact that once would have counted as a diplomatic milestone on its own.
