The South Korean leader said that the Korean Peninsula stands at a “crossroads” because of the possibility of “strategic provocations” by North Korea in October.
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The two leaders adopted the new set of joint statements separately on North Korea for the first time, the presidential office said.
Worldwide aid-for-disarmament talks with the North stalled seven years ago.
“At the point where Kim Jong-Un says we are interested in seeing relations and denuclearization, I think it’s fair to say we will be right there at the table”, he added.
Ms. Park’s firm response to a North Korean military incursion in August included reinstituting broadcasting information into North Korea along the Demilitarized Zone. 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.
South Korean President Park Geun-Hye has indicated that South Korea could join the recently agreed Pacific free-trade deal, during a visit to Washington.
“You need to have this genuine willingness on the part of North Korea that they will give up nuclear capabilities”, she said through a translator.
But Park has invested a lot of diplomatic capital in closer relations with China, as she seeks to pull Beijing away from its traditional close embrace of North Korea.
Now on a four-day official visit to the United States, Park said in Washington on Thursday that she was open to a sit-down with Abe on the sidelines of a trilateral leadership dialogue being held with China in Seoul.
The comment was apparently meant to dispel worries among a few critics that Seoul may be tilted toward China as Park attended the massive military parade in Beijing last month, widely seen as a show of force amid the growing rivalry between the USA and China.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and global Studies on Thursday, Park said that South Korea was a “natural partner” for the bloc.
“It is our basic stance that Japanese military activities affecting the security on the Korean peninsula and our national interests won’t be permitted”, a defence ministry official was quoted as saying by the Yonhap news agency.
The last visit by Japan’s defense chief to South Korea was made in January 2011.
They’ll also discuss the often-touchy relations among China, Japan and South Korea, whose leaders are to hold a long-awaited summit in Seoul in early November. Economic ties between the two Asian nations run deep: Bilateral trade was worth $235.3 billion in 2014, or more than twice the value of U.S.-South Korean exchange.
“It’s stronger than it’s ever been”, Obama said. Her language may rankle a little with Japan, which is also a critical USA ally in the region, hosting almost 50,000 American troops.
“Russian Federation starts realizing that they are not going to be able to bomb their way to a peaceful situation inside of Syria, that we will be able to make progress on that front”, Obama said of USA efforts to convince Russian Federation that only a political solution can resolve the war in Syria.
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The Obama administration has faced criticism from hawks and doves alike for a lack of high-level attention on North Korea, which estimated to have enough fissile material for between 10 and 16 nuclear weapons.
