SEOUL —
US President Joe Biden and South Korea’s new President Yoon Suk-yeol signaled on
Saturday an expanded military presence in response to the “threat” from North
Korea, while also offering to help the isolated regime face a COVID-19
outbreak.
اضافة اعلان
After meeting in
Seoul on Biden’s first trip to
Asia as president, the two leaders said in a
statement that “considering the evolving threat posed by” North Korea, they
“agree to initiate discussions to expand the scope and scale of combined
military exercises and training on and around the Korean peninsula”.
The possible
beefing up of joint exercises comes in response to North Korea’s growing
belligerence, with a blitz of sanctions-busting weapons tests this year as
fears grow that
Kim Jong Un will order a nuclear test while Biden is in Asia.
Biden and Yoon also extended an offer of help to Pyongyang, which has recently
announced it is in the midst of a Covid-19 outbreak, a rare admission of
internal troubles.
The US-South Korea
statement said the two presidents “express concern over the recent Covid-19
outbreak” and “are willing to work with the international community to provide
assistance” to North Korea to help fight the virus. On Saturday, North Korean
state media reported nearly 2.5 million people had been sick with “fever” with
66 deaths as the country “intensified” its anti-epidemic campaign.
Biden, while adding
that he would not exclude a meeting with Kim if he were “sincere”, indicated
the difficulty of dealing with the unpredictable dictator. “We’ve offered
vaccines, not only to North Korea but to
China as well and we’re prepared to do
that immediately,” Biden said at a press conference with Yoon. “We’ve got no
response.”
For his part, Yoon stressed that the offer of COVID aid was
according to “humanitarian principles, separate from political and military
issues”. Elected on a strongly pro-US message, Yoon emphasized the need to
reinforce
South Korea’s defenses. Any ramping up of US-South Korea joint
military exercises, is likely to enrage Pyongyang, which views the drills as
rehearsals for invasion.
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