CIA chief Mike Pompeo made a surprise visit to South Korea Monday, meeting with top military and intelligence officials in the country days after North Korea carried out a new round of ballistic missile tests.
Mr. Pompeo arrived in Seoul over the weekend, meeting with Lee Byung-ho, head of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and other top government officials, as well as U.S. Forces-Korea chief Gen. Vincent Brooks, according to Yonghap News.
The unannounced visit was designed to help coordinate any potential response to North Korea’s continued antagonistic actions via its nuclear weapons development efforts.
He is the third senior administration official from President Trump’s national security cabinet to visit the Korean peninsula amid growing tensions between Washington and Pyongyang.
Defense Secretary James Mattis, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, along with Vice President Mike Pence, all made separate visits to Seoul over the last several weeks to reaffirm the White House’s support for South Korea and its allies in the face of North Korean aggression.
On Saturday, U.S. warships attached to the USS Carl Vinson strike group began bilateral naval drills with the South Korean navy, hours after Pyongyang’s latest ballistic missile test. The drills were part of ongoing efforts geared toward “deterring North Korea’s provocations and displaying the firm alliance between the United States and South Korea,” according to a statement from Seoul, ABC News reported.
The live fire of a midrange intercontinental ballistic missile on Saturday was an immediate failure and the fourth failed missile shot carried out by North Korea since March.
On April 15, North Korean forces launched a new round of ballistic missile tests, again flouting U.S. and international sanctions barring such weapons testing. The test shot, fired in commemoration of the 105th birthday of North Korean founding father Kim Il Sung, also failed “almost immediately,” officials tracking the launch at U.S. Pacific Command said at the time.
The test, which flouted a series of U.S. and international sanctions banning the country’s ballistic missile program, punctuated the escalating game of oneupmanship between the Trump White House North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Officials from the North Korean Foreign Ministry on Monday vowed to accelerate its efforts to develop and field a nuclear weapon, in response to increased U.S. aggression on the peninsula.
“The recent confrontation with the U.S. reminds us once again that the iron truth is that one’s own strength in order to defend oneself from the whirlwind of history,” according to a ministry statement. “Now that the U.S. is kicking up the overall racket for sanctions and pressure against [North Korea] … we will speed up the pace for the measure of bolstering its nuclear deterrence.”
Aside from ramping up the pace of its nuclear development, Pyongyang vowed “to respond to any option taken by the U.S., and … will continue to bolster its military capabilities for self-defense and preemptive nuclear attack with the nuclear force as a pivot,” ministry officials added.
The White House hosted Wednesday an extraordinary national security briefing on North Korea for the Senate by America’s head diplomat and military commanders about the rouge state’s increasingly threatening rhetoric.
The national-security briefing on North Korea for senators Wednesday stemmed from Mr. Trump’s desire “to communicate the seriousness of the threat from North Korea” and focused on how the U.S. will soon be using “the economic dimension of national power, as well as the military preparations that are underway” in confronting the threat from North Korea, a senior White House official said.
A joint statement from Mr. Tillerson, Mr. Mattis and Mr. Coats explained that the Trump administration’s “approach aims to pressure North Korea into dismantling its nuclear, ballistic missile, and proliferation programs by tightening economic sanctions and pursuing diplomatic measures with our Allies and regional partners.”
They added that the U.S. is engaging with allies “to increase pressure on the DPRK in order to convince the regime to de-escalate and return to the path of dialogue” and working in close coordination with the Republic of Korea and Japan.
• Carlo Muñoz can be reached at cmunoz@washingtontimes.com.
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