# Two Ruling Party Lawmakers Hit US Visa Trouble, and Seoul Is Reading It as a Warning Sign > A refused visa for one sitting lawmaker and a delayed one for another, both from South Korea's ruling party, have Seoul officials worried less about two individual trips than about what the setbacks suggest about the state of trust between the allies. - Source: Korea First - Canonical URL: https://koreafirst.tv/article/two-ruling-party-lawmakers-hit-us-visa-trouble-and-seoul-is-reading-it-as-a-warning-sign - Author: Korea First Staff - Section: Politics - Published: 2026-10-29T11:54:39.029Z - Updated: 2026-10-29T11:54:39.029Z - Tags: US visa, Democratic Party, South Korea-US alliance, National Assembly, diplomacy - Korean edition: https://koreafirst.tv/ko/article/two-ruling-party-lawmakers-hit-us-visa-trouble-and-seoul-is-reading-it-as-a-warning-sign --- Two sitting lawmakers from South Korea's ruling Democratic Party have run into trouble obtaining U.S. visas in recent weeks, and officials in Seoul are treating the pattern as more concerning than either individual case on its own would suggest. ## A refusal and a delay Rep. Jin Sung-joon, who chairs the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, had his visa application refused ahead of a planned trip to Hawaii, a setback notable in part because Jin had previously visited U.S. Pacific Command in 2014 without any apparent issue. Rep. Jung Chung-rae, a former leader of the Democratic Party, faced a different complication: his visa decision was delayed rather than denied outright, forcing him to rework his travel plans into a trip to Europe instead. ## No official reason, but an obvious guess Washington has not publicly explained either decision, and the U.S. Embassy in Seoul declined to comment when asked. That silence has left room for speculation rooted in both lawmakers' pasts: each has a history tied to anti-American student activism from the 1980s, including past convictions, the kind of background that can surface in U.S. visa vetting even decades later and even for sitting members of a foreign legislature. ## Beyond the two lawmakers The cases are not entirely isolated. Employees of South Korea's National Intelligence Service have also experienced delays, though not outright denials, in their own U.S. visa processing, suggesting the friction extends somewhat beyond individual lawmakers' personal histories into something closer to a broader pattern in how applications from South Korean officials are currently being handled. ## Why officials are calling it a trust problem A government source described the stakes bluntly, noting that relations between the two countries are already facing difficulties, and that incidents like these could further erode mutual trust, language that frames the visa troubles less as a bureaucratic snag than as a symptom of broader strain in the alliance. South Korea's foreign minister called the delays undesirable and said the ministry would push for expedited processing, a response aimed at smoothing over the immediate cases without directly addressing why they happened in the first place. A spokesperson for the Progressive Party went further, calling the situation a clear violation of sovereignty, a sharper read that treats the visa setbacks as Washington overstepping into decisions that should rest with South Korea's own legislature and its voters rather than with American immigration officials. ## An open case, not a closed one Jin's application has not been conclusively closed out, leaving room for the decision to still shift. Whether that happens, and whether Jung's case resolves any differently, will likely matter less to Seoul than whether similar setbacks keep recurring for other ruling party figures in the months ahead, the real test of whether this is a pattern or simply two unrelated cases that happened to land close together. --- Originally published by Korea First. Free to cite with attribution and a link to https://koreafirst.tv/article/two-ruling-party-lawmakers-hit-us-visa-trouble-and-seoul-is-reading-it-as-a-warning-sign.