SEOUL (The Straits Times/ANN): Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin arrived in Seoul on Wednesday (March 17) with top US diplomat Antony Blinken, for talks with South Korean officials to bolster a united front against an increasingly assertive China and nuclear-armed North Korea.
South Korea is the second leg of their inaugural overseas trip, after Japan. Both countries are security allies of the United States.
The Biden administration is focused on rallying alliances with its key Asian partners to counter a rising China.
Before leaving Tokyo, Secretary of State Blinken accused Beijing of acting more repressively at home and "more aggressively abroad", citing its activities in the East and South China Seas as well as towards Taiwan.
"It's important for us to make clear together that China cannot expect to act with impunity," Blinken said.
North Korea is likely to move up the agenda in South Korea, where the US stations 28,500 troops to defend it against its neighbour.
The allies kicked off joint military exercises last week, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's influential sister warned Washington this week against "causing a stink at its first step" if it wants to "sleep in peace for coming four years".
The statement by Kim Yo Jong, a key adviser to her brother, was the reclusive state's first explicit reference to the new leadership in Washington, more than four months after President Joe Biden was elected to replace Donald Trump -- although it still did not mention the 78-year-old Democrat by name.
The US envoys will on Thursday meet President Moon Jae-in, who brokered the talks between Kim and Trump in 2018.
Trump's unorthodox approach to foreign policy saw him trade insults and threats of war with Kim before an extraordinary diplomatic bromance that saw a series of headline-grabbing meetings.
But ultimately, no progress was made towards Washington's declared aim of denuclearising North Korea, with a second summit in Hanoi in early 2019 breaking up without an agreement, and Pyongyang still under multiple international sanctions for its banned weapons programmes.
Blinken and Austin will consult on a review of Washington's policy towards North Korea being carried out by the new administration.
But they have already called during their trip for "the complete denuclearisation of North Korea".
The phrase is anathema to Pyongyang, which prefers the broader and more ambiguous "denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula", which could be taken to include the US nuclear umbrella over the South.
Since the Hanoi summit, Moon's administration has repeatedly tried to reach out to Pyongyang, but has been regularly rebuffed. - The Straits Times/Asia News Network
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