US lawmakers to clash with Donald Trump as they push closer South Korea ties and he ‘wants North Korea strike’
Lawmakers from both major US parties have joined a group tasked with boosting South Korea relations as US president weighs ‘bloody nose’ strategy
US lawmakers are moving to strengthen Washington’s relationship with South Korea, setting up a confrontation with President Donald Trump, who may be planning a pre-emptive military strike against North Korea.
Lawmakers from the US’s two main parties have joined a newly established congressional body tasked with fostering direct contact with their South Korean counterparts, one of only four such bipartisan congressional study groups in the US legislative branch.
The inauguration of the Congressional Study Group on Korea (CSGK) comes just days after Trump reportedly dropped a Seoul ambassadorship candidate for not supporting a limited attack on North Korea – dubbed a “bloody nose” strike – to achieve the president’s goal of removing nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula.
While efforts to establish the study group were underway before Trump took office, “given the heightened concern and attention over developments on the Korean Peninsula, this may have expedited” the process, Thomas Byrne, president of the New York-based Korea Society, said in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
The Korea Society and the Seoul-based Korea Foundation are designated CSGK partners. As such, they help organise, and participate in, congressional delegations to South Korea and roundtables with lawmakers.
The developments Byrne referred to include Pyongyang’s sixth nuclear test and its test-firing of more than 20 missiles, including some that could strike the US, all performed in 2017 in defiance of United Nations Security Council resolutions.