Forged message to South Korea's president recycles 2019 warning to Turkish leader

"Trump’s letter to Lee Jae Myung carried by Ambassador Morse Tan. Its contents are insulting," reads part of a Korean-language post on online forum Naver Band shared on July 17, 2025.

The purported letter to Lee, which surfaced after Trump threatened Seoul with 25 percent tariffs unless a trade deal is negotiated by August 1, proposes the leaders work out a "good deal" (archived link). 

"You don't want to be responsible for slaughtering thousands of people, and I don't want to be responsible for destroying the Korean economy -- and I will," the purported letter continues.

It adds that "Ambassador Morse Tan" is willing to negotiate, and warns history will brand Lee a "devil" if he failed to act "in the right and humane way."

Tan, a former US diplomat turned activist, has previously made unsubstantiated allegations of election fraud and falsely accused Lee of having committed serious crimes in his youth (archived link).

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Screenshot of the false Naver Band post captured on July 17, 2025, with a red X added by AFP

The supposed missive from Trump was also shared in other right-wing groups on Facebook and Naver Band.

"Trump is really pushing Lee into a corner," read a comment on one of the posts.

Another said: "This is payback for imprisoning President Yoon Suk Yeol."

But the purported message from Trump to Lee is a fabrication.

Letter to Turkish president

A reverse image search on Google found the letter was altered from a message Trump sent to Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on October 9, 2019 -- as reported at the time by multiple news outlets, including Politico and The New York Times (archived here and here).

The original letter was sent as Turkey launched a military offensive in northeast Syria against Kurdish-led forces, who were allied with the United States against ISIS at the time (archived link).  

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces were in the forefront of the campaign to defeat ISIS, but Erdogan links them to separatist militants within Turkey.

In the letter, Trump warned Erdogan not to be "a tough guy" or "a fool" and urged him to negotiate a ceasefire.

Archived White House records show the letter and its contents were also brought up during a joint press conference between the two leaders in November 2019 (archived link).

The letter shared in the false posts replaces the original's letterhead and Erdogan's title, and superimposes "Amb. Morse Tan" over the name of a Kurdish general. The final line of the original letter has also been changed so it reads, "I will not call you later."

Untouched, however, is a reference to Andrew Brunson -- an American pastor held for two years in Turkey on terror-related charges who became a cause celebre for Trump's conservative Christian base (archived link).

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Screenshot comparison of the fabricated letter, with altered parts marked by AFP in red (left) and the original message sent to Erdogan from 2019, as published by Politico (right)

The letterhead appears to have been lifted from a genuine message Trump sent on July 7 informing Lee that a 25 percent tariff would be placed on South Korean products from August 1.

The letter was printed in reports by the Korea Times and News1 (archived here and here). 

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Screenshot comparison of the altered letter, with letterhead marked in red by AFP (left), and the genuine message addressed to Lee about tariffs (right)

AFP previously debunked similar false posts about a letter Trump purportedly sent to South Korea's disgraced former president Yoon Suk Yeol.