Trump ultimately made no mention of deploying troops to the Strait of Hormuz

At the South Korea-U.S. summit held in New York on Monday (local time), U.S. President Donald Trump made no mention of the issue of deploying troops to the Strait of Hormuz. The matter was not discussed at all during the summit. A senior presidential official said, "Because a wide range of issues came up during the talks, there was in fact no discussion of Hormuz." Although the United States has repeatedly demanded that South Korea deploy troops to the Strait of Hormuz, the issue never made it onto the summit table.

That same day, President Lee Jae-myung proposed a "coalition of constructive contributors" in his keynote address to the United Nations General Assembly. At the heart of the proposal is multilateralism: rather than tying the Strait of Hormuz issue to military and security matters, it envisions a consultative framework in which more countries participate through a link to global supply chains. President Lee explained, "This is not about creating a new exclusive organization or exclusive group," adding, "It is about respecting the existing international order and the functions of the United Nations, while each country cooperates in an open manner in areas where it has its own strengths, and gradually expanding that scope."

Seoul has effectively moved the issue out of bilateral negotiations and into an international cooperation framework, along the lines of the coalition model presented in the UN speech. Since the deployment demand went unmentioned on the day, its fate is expected to hinge on how the international community responds to the coalition model.