SKorea: Regional summit chance to improve ties with Japan

Park’s overture to Asia’s largest economy had been a cause for concern among US officials who anxious Park was steering South Korea toward closer relations with China, while moving away from the existing security alliance with Japan and the United States.

North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests and threatened a fourth as part of a weapons and missile program that it has pursued through a barrage of global sanctions.

“Today, I want to reaffirm that the commitment of the United States to the defense and security of the Republican of Korea will never waver”, Obama said.

“Now, whether, even if they made that gesture, they would then be willing to subject themselves to the kind of rigorous verification regimes that we have set up with Iran, particularly given their past violations of agreements, that’s a separate question”, he said. Iran has struck a nuclear agreement. About 30,000 USA troops are stationed in South Korea, a presence which dates back to the United Nations force which repelled an attack from North Korea in 1950.

Standing alongside with Obama, Park said that North Korea and its leader needed to display “genuine willingness” to give up its nuclear program. “Yet, North Korea clings to the path of isolation by continuing its military provocations and development of nuclear capabilities”, she said.

Speaking at the 27th annual meeting of the U.S.-Korea Business Council at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Washington on Thursday, Park asked the business community to lead the way in establishing an innovative economic network between the two countries.

The trilateral summits with China were initiated in 2008 and held annually until 2012 when they were suspended after Seoul-Tokyo relations went into one of their regular tail-spins. The USA should encourage South Korea to join in these attempts at greater alliance and partner cohesion. “I do feel that I can have a bilateral meeting with Abe”, she added.

The sixth and perhaps final round of talks ended in 2008, when North Korea fired a Taepodong-2 ballistic missile. That was seen as aimed at dispelling criticism that the Obama administration is resigned to the status quo and has little interest in tackling the North Korean nuclear issue in earnest.

A trilateral summit has not been held since May 2012 due to tensions mainly over Japan’s attempts to whitewash its wartime atrocities and colonial occupation. The Korean peninsula was under Japanese rule from 1910 to 1945.

The two leaders also vowed to intensify high-level strategic consultations to create a favorable environment for the peaceful unification of the Korean Peninsula.

Obama decried “in the strongest possible terms” the recent violence in Israel and said its government had a right to maintain law and order and protect its citizens from attacks.

Ms. Park’s firm response to a North Korean military incursion in August included reinstituting broadcasting information into North Korea along the Demilitarized Zone. “Here, should the unthinkable happen, that’s it, we’re in it”, Martin says. The two presidents should take a sober look at why the North Korea denuclearization policy failed.