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On a trip to South Korea later this week, US Vice President Kamala Harris will stop into the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone, the White House announced on Tuesday. Harris will visit the DMZ on Thursday, a White House official said. Harris is presently in Tokyo for the state funeral of the slain former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. Considering that North Korea referred to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as the “greatest destroyer of international peace” on her visit to the demilitarised zone in August, the action is sure to incite a furious response from that country.
Following the initiation of the allies’ first joint naval exercise near the peninsula in five years, Pyongyang warned on Monday that South Korea and the United States ran the risk of starting a war.
The US official claimed that Harris’s trip to the DMZ would “underscore the United States’ determination to stand with (South Korea) in the face of any threats posed by” North Korea.
As the Korean War came to an end in 1953 with a ceasefire that divided the peninsula, Harris would “focus on the shared sacrifice” of US and Korean soldiers who died in the conflict, the official said.
Prior to Abe’s burial on Tuesday, which will be attended by a large number of foreign dignitaries, Harris landed in Japan on Monday and met with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida.
The DMZ tour would provide “extremely symbolic evidence of your strong dedication to the security and peace of the Korean Peninsula,” according to South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who spoke with Harris on Tuesday in Tokyo.
This year, North Korea conducted a barrage of weapons tests that broke all previous records, including the first launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range since 2017.
Officials in Washington and Seoul have regularly expressed concern that North Korea is ready to conduct what would be its seventh nuclear test, which the US has warned would result in a “swift and robust” reaction.
Following years of unsuccessful negotiation with North Korea under his predecessor, Yoon Suk-yeol, the next president of South Korea, has threatened to intensify joint military exercises with the United States.
The joint naval drill, according to the South Korean navy, “was organised to demonstrate the strong will of the South Korea-US alliance to respond to North Korean provocations,” the navy said on Monday.
