South Korean media yesterday warned of a “Trump risk” threatening the alliance between Washington and Seoul amid high tensions over North Korea’s weapons ambitions.
The two nations are bound by a defense pact and 28,500 US troops are stationed in the South.
However, US President Donald Trump has said that Seoul should pay for a “billion-dollar” US missile defense system being deployed in the South to guard against threats from the nuclear-armed North.
He has also pushed for renegotiation of what he called a “horrible” bilateral free-trade pact that went into effect five years ago, calling it an “unacceptable ... deal made by [then-US secretary of state] Hillary [Rodham Clinton].”
The remarks stunned Seoul, with South Korean politicians immediately rejecting his push for payment for the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery.
“Trump’s mouth rattling Korea-US alliance” a front-page headline in South Korea’s top-selling Chosun Ilbo said.
“There are issues that are far more important than just money,” the newspaper said in an editorial. “If either country keeps reducing the alliance to the matter of money or the economy, it is bound to undermine basic trust.”
Seoul needed to come up with “various Plan Bs” for the future, the paper said.
Trump on Sunday told CBS that if the North carried out a sixth nuclear test, he “would not be happy... And I can tell you also, I don’t believe that the president of China, who is a very respected man, will be happy either.”
“We’ll see” whether that signified military action, said Trump, who also described North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a “pretty smart cookie.”
Seoul’s presidential office on Sunday said Trump’s national security adviser, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, had appeared to backtrack on THAAD, telling his South Korean counterpart by telephone that the US would bear the cost of the missile deployment as initially agreed.
However, McMaster told Fox News Sunday that the “last thing” he would ever do was contradict the president, and that “the relationship on THAAD, on our defense relationship going forward, will be renegotiated as it’s going to be with all of our allies.”
The JoongAng Ilbo accused Trump’s administration of sending “confusing and contradictory messages,” creating a “chaotic situation” that dealt a “huge blow” to the bilateral alliance.
“The US must be well aware of the pain and backlash Seoul has endured to push for the THAAD deployment,” it added.
The Dong-A Ilbo printed on its front page: “Trump Risk... we need to come up with new strategy for Korea-US alliance.”
Trump was pouring “a barrage of verbal bombs” on Seoul in a challenge to its next leader, the paper said.
“We hope that Trump will be more careful with his words,” the Dong-A Ilbo said in an editorial. “Who’s going to smile if our alliance is shaken? It will be North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and China’s Xi Jinping [習近平].”
In related news, CIA Director Mike Pompeo was in Seoul yesterday for an “internal meeting,” the US embassy confirmed.
The Chosun Ilbo said that Pompeo arrived in Seoul this weekend and held back-to-back closed-door meetings with the head of the South’s spy agency and senior presidential officials.
Two US House of Representatives committees yesterday condemned China’s attempt to orchestrate a crash involving Vice President Hsiao Bi-khim’s (蕭美琴) car when she visited the Czech Republic last year as vice president-elect. Czech local media in March last year reported that a Chinese diplomat had run a red light while following Hsiao’s car from the airport, and Czech intelligence last week told local media that Chinese diplomats and agents had also planned to stage a demonstrative car collision. Hsiao on Saturday shared a Reuters news report on the incident through her account on social media platform X and wrote: “I
‘BUILDING PARTNERSHIPS’: The US military’s aim is to continue to make any potential Chinese invasion more difficult than it already is, US General Ronald Clark said The likelihood of China invading Taiwan without contest is “very, very small” because the Taiwan Strait is under constant surveillance by multiple countries, a US general has said. General Ronald Clark, commanding officer of US Army Pacific (USARPAC), the US Army’s largest service component command, made the remarks during a dialogue hosted on Friday by Washington-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Asked by the event host what the Chinese military has learned from its US counterpart over the years, Clark said that the first lesson is that the skill and will of US service members are “unmatched.” The second
STANDING TOGETHER: Amid China’s increasingly aggressive activities, nations must join forces in detecting and dealing with incursions, a Taiwanese official said Two senior Philippine officials and one former official yesterday attended the Taiwan International Ocean Forum in Taipei, the first high-level visit since the Philippines in April lifted a ban on such travel to Taiwan. The Ocean Affairs Council hosted the two-day event at the National Taiwan University Hospital International Convention Center. Philippine Navy spokesman Rear Admiral Roy Vincent Trinidad, Coast Guard spokesman Grand Commodore Jay Tarriela and former Philippine Presidential Communications Office assistant secretary Michel del Rosario participated in the forum. More than 100 officials, experts and entrepreneurs from 15 nations participated in the forum, which included discussions on countering China’s hybrid warfare
MORE DEMOCRACY: The only solution to Taiwan’s current democratic issues involves more democracy, including Constitutional Court rulings and citizens exercising their civil rights , Lai said The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is not the “motherland” of the Republic of China (ROC) and has never owned Taiwan, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday. The speech was the third in a series of 10 that Lai is scheduled to deliver across Taiwan. Taiwan is facing external threats from China, Lai said at a Lions Clubs International banquet in Hsinchu. For example, on June 21 the army detected 12 Chinese aircraft, eight of which entered Taiwanese waters, as well as six Chinese warships that remained in the waters around Taiwan, he said. Beyond military and political intimidation, Taiwan
RSS