The president of the US Congress has met with her counterpart in the South Korean National Assembly Kim Jin-pyo in Seoul /
After her controversial stopover in Taiwan, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives now shows her support for the South Korean government against the Pyongyang regime
After her controversial visit to Taiwan, the president of the United States Congress, Nancy Pelosi, has arrived in Seoul where she has guaranteed the support of the United States for the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The Democratic representative has released a joint statement with the president of the South Korean Parliament, Kim Jin-pyo, in which both show their “concern” about “the increased level of threat from” their northern neighbor. Building on a powerful and widespread deterrence against North Korea that the population can recognize, we agree to support both governments’ efforts toward denuclearization and peace through international cooperation and diplomatic dialogue. release.
Seoul is Pelosi’s fourth stop on her Asian tour. He has previously met with different authorities from Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan; a stop the latter whose consequences have a substantial scope. Apart from the angry response from China, and the military maneuvers that take place around the island between this Thursday and Sunday, the visit has caused other domestic consequences and satisfied the Republican opposition more than the Administration of President Joe Biden. Some Democratic congressmen and analysts have even asked the White House to abandon its traditional “strategic ambiguity” in the Sino-Taiwanese conflict and be more forceful with Beijing in the face of Russia’s example with Ukraine.
And this, despite the fact that Biden has revealed himself as an insistent critic of the Xi Jinping regime and an increasingly serious power as a competitor of US economic and commercial interests. Jack Kirby, adviser to the National Security Council, responded last night to journalists that Pelosi had a perfect “right” to visit Taipei, but with a singular nuance: “The trip was her decision and Congress is an independent branch of the Government”.
military confrontation
The stopover in Seoul also has an edge-walking component. The tension on the peninsula has increased in recent months with the same intensity as the confrontation between the Pyongyang government and the White House. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned on July 28 that his country is prepared “to mobilize” the “absolute power” of its “nuclear deterrence” forces if a scenario of “military confrontation with USA”. Little joke, apart from the rhetorical accent of the message. The North Korean Army has multiplied ballistic missile tests and on June 5 launched five of them in an unprecedented exercise due to its number just after the US and South Korea finished military exercises. Neighbors to the north have expressed their anger at this type of combined drills, since they consider them “invasion” rehearsals.
Pelosi will visit the demilitarized zone where Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un held a historic meeting in 2019 /
Pelosi has taken advantage of her first meetings in Seoul to highlight the increase in collaboration in different areas between the United States and the South Korean Executive. The Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, already announced on June 14 that the US is working together with South Korea and Japan to deal with “the threat posed by North Korea”” and underlined the good relations with the authorities. of Seoul and Washington’s desire to strengthen them. The White House is aware of the economic and commercial potential of the Indo-Pacific region. Good proof of this is the Asian tour that Joe Biden made in May and which had a stop in Seoul, where the US president visited the largest semiconductor factory in the world and defended the protection at all costs of “supply chains” to avoid international crises.
Pelosi also travels today, according to her agenda, to Panmunjom, a border town with North Korea located in the demilitarized zone between the two countries and called “the most tense area in the world” because North Korean, South Korean and American forces cohabit there. The two Koreas signed the armistice that ended the war there in 1953 and four years ago chose it as the venue for their talks on nuclear weapons. Trump and Kim Jong-un met in this town in 2019.