Trump, South Korean President to Focus on North Korea at First Meeting The two leaders differ on how to address the North Korea issue; military alliance and trade deal are also on the table By Jonathan Cheng in Seoul and Carol E. Lee in Washington
https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-south-korean-president-to-focus-on-north-korea-at-first-meeting-1498689732
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump are set to meet in Washington on Thursday for the first time, a highly anticipated summit that will serve as an early test of the new leaders’ relationship following several differences over key policies.
The discussions between Messrs. Trump and Moon, who will have dinner Thursday night at the White House and meet again on Friday, come amid growing urgency about confronting the threat from North Korea. The two leaders have suggested dramatically different approaches to the issue.
Mr. Moon, South Korea’s first left-leaning president in nearly a decade, has called for closer ties with North Korea, primarily through economic cooperation, while the Trump administration has called for tougher sanctions, military pressure and diplomatic isolation.
White House officials said North Korea is likely to dominate the talks between Messrs. Trump and Moon. They played down differences in the two leaders’ approaches and said Mr. Trump will stress to Mr. Moon the need to coordinate their policies.
Mr. Trump’s policy is to apply pressure on North Korea “to change their calculus to have substantive talks with us once they show they are willing to reduce the threat,” a senior White House official said. The official said Mr. Trump sees nothing “problematic” with Mr. Moon’s positions.
The U.S. administration is seeking to ramp up sanctions on North Korea and apply new diplomatic pressure to Pyongyang, though the White House official said no new sanctions are imminent.
“The State Department has been talking to our friends and partners throughout the world really to address North Korea’s trade, to address many of their illegal activities sometimes conducted under the guise of diplomatic missions to raise capital, hard currency for their weapons programs,” the official said. “I think there’s plenty more pressure that could be brought to bear on North Korea in the form of U.N. Security Council resolutions and also unilateral sanctions by the United States.” CONTINUE AT SITE
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