“She is straddling the fence between Beijing and Washington”.
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South Korean President Park Geun-hye and her US counterpart Barack Obama on Friday adopted a joint statement on North Korea, renewing their strategic alliance to effectively contain its nuclear ambitions and provocations.
I believe the main mission of the two presidents is to disrupt the pattern that we have seen over the past decade where North Korea conducts long-range rocket tests and nuclear tests about every three years.
Obama has little over a year left in office, and a fresh USA push on North Korea is seen as unlikely. That’s a good thing. The two presidents should take a sober look at why the North Korea denuclearization policy failed.
Later in the afternoon, the South Korean leader was invited to Naval Observatory, the residence of US Vice President Joe Biden for an official lunch.
Park said that South Korea, the US and China – the North’s only major ally – should make new efforts to deal with Pyongyang. Though she did not mention her strategy with China in detail, she alluded to the “complex and multidimensional” challenges in a world in which “the line between geopolitics and geoeconomics has become blurred”.
U.S. President Barack Obama and South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Washington and Seoul are taking steps toward a comprehensive global alliance while remaining rooted in security ties that recognize North Korea’s nuclear provocations as the “biggest threat to the Korean peninsula”. Speaking on Thursday evening at CSIS, Park noted that she thought a bilateral with Abe would be possible.
During a summit held at the White House, the highlight of Park’s four-day trip to Washington, the two leaders also reaffirmed their bilateral partnership and agreed to upgrade their ties for shared economic prosperity and regional peace. This comes after President Park attended a Chinese military parade last month, causing concerns about South Korea’s growing relationship with China.
“But there is the other dynamic”, Cha added, “which is the idea that the Chinese probably don’t perceive it that way”.
USA officials in attendance at the ceremony included U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Mark Lippert, U.S. Forces Korea commander Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti and Assistant Secretary of Defense David Shear. “But we haven’t even gotten to that point yet, because there’s been no indication on the part of the North Koreans, as there was with the Iranians, that they could foresee a future in which they did not possess or were not pursuing nuclear weapons”.
“Japan and Korea are our two closest allies in North-east Asia, and their relationship and their ability to cooperate is a strategic priority for the United States”, he said.
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China’s role in the region will also be up for discussion.
