Was making a bigger base a bad idea?
Here s What You Need To Know: Pyongyang has been improving its heavy artillery in parallel with efforts to develop increasingly heavy, accurate, and long-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.
A multi-billion-dollar plan to move thousands of U.S. troops farther from the Korean demilitarized zone in order to get them out of firing range of North Korean artillery appears to have failed.
At the same time that the Americans are moving onto their new base, the North Koreans have been testing a longer-range rocket that can hit the facility.
For decades, many of the 30,000 U.S. troops in South Korea operated out of Yongsan Garrison in Seoul plus more than 150 other, smaller bases.
View Comments
WASHINGTON President Joe Biden will host South Korean President Moon Jae-in at the White House Friday as the two leaders seek complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula after past U.S. administrations failed in that objective.
Biden is pushing a middle ground between the grand bargain approach of former President Donald Trump and Barack Obama s strategic patience to halt North Korea s nuclear weapons program.
The gathering will mark Biden s second in-person bilateral meeting in his young presidency after hosting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga at the White House last month. It comes after the Biden administration recently completed a policy review of North Korea, whose nuclear program Biden labeled a serious threat in his first address to Congress.
David May
is a research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy. Follow FDD on Twitter @FDD.
«
«
Get all our news and commentary in your inbox at 6 a.m. ET.
email Biden, Moon Seek Return to Normal After Four Years of ‘Chaotic’ Trump
But the U.S. and South Korean leaders remain far apart on topics from North Korea to human rights.
After years of Donald Trump’s claims that Seoul is ripping off America, Joe Biden will seek to heal the allies’ strained relations in his first presidential meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-In. But Friday’s summit will be just the prelude to difficult conversations on everything from North Korea to human rights, and experts expect no immediate major foreign policy agreements.