USNI News:
The emphasis shouldn’t be on how much Seoul is paying in its own defense but how to deal with North Korea’s expanding missile and nuclear weapons programs, former senior diplomats from the U.S. and South Korea said on Monday.
Speaking at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Han Sung-joo, a former Korean minister of foreign affairs, said, “It is quite possible we would end up with governments with very different views” on those issues and future relations with China when Donald Trump takes the oath of office and Park Geun-hye either resigns by next spring or is impeached later this week.
“The threat is growing” from North Korea and “the means to deal with it are limited,” Han, who also served as Korea’s ambassador to the United States warned.
Complicating matters in Seoul right now, current President Park has offered to resign faced with an impeachment vote. Under a plan offered by her party, the resignation would take effect in April. More than 170 members of the 300-seat National Assembly belong to the opposition or independent parties.
Unlike the past when the North Korea threat was pushed aside to deal with Iran’s missile and nuclear weapons program, time is running out to end Pyongyang’s testing programs, the diplomats said.
Christopher Hill, a former U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, said, the key fact is that this is a military testing program of land- and sea-based missiles and miniaturizing nuclear weapons.
Their “one purpose is putting deliverable nuclear weapons … on top of a missile,” so testing will continue until it succeeds in meeting that goal.
