North Korea on Monday fired a missile as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited South Korea, where he warned Pyongyang was working ever more closely with Russia on advanced space technology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blinken\u2019s trip came as investigators were trying to arrest<\/a> conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has entrenched himself in his residence after being impeached for a failed attempt to impose martial law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken, who had planned to encourage South Korea to maintain Yoon\u2019s policy of enhancing cooperation with Japan, was in talks in Seoul when North Korea fired a ballistic missile that fell into the sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The missile flew around 1,100 kilometres (680 miles), the South Korean military said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cToday\u2019s launch is just a reminder to all of us of how important our collaborative work is,\u201d Blinken said, pointing to increased three-way exercises and intelligence-sharing on North Korea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken and his South Korean counterpart Cho Tae-yul condemned the launch at a joint news conference, where the outgoing US top diplomat warned that Russia was stepping up<\/a> support for North Korea as a reward for its help fighting Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n North Korea \u201cis already receiving Russian military equipment and training. Now we have reason to believe that Moscow intends to share advanced space and satellite technology with Pyongyang,\u201d Blinken said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken also renewed concern that Russia, a veto-wielding UN Security Council member, would formally accept North Korea as a nuclear state, which would be a major blow to the global consensus that Pyongyang must end its programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n US and South Korean intelligence believe that North Korea late last year sent thousands of troops to fight against Ukraine and has already suffered hundreds of casualties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Tokyo, where Blinken heads later Monday, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba voiced alarm that North Korea\u2019s \u201ctechnology has been improving\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The test comes two weeks before the inauguration<\/a> of US President-elect Donald Trump, who in his last term sought to woo North Korea with a unique personal diplomacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump, who once threatened \u201cfire and fury\u201d against North Korea, went on to meet three times with leader Kim Jong Un and said they \u201cfell in love\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Joe Biden offered a more traditional formula of working-level talks focused on ending North Korea\u2019s nuclear programme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken defended the outgoing administration\u2019s approach, saying it had reached out to North Korea and only got \u201cmore and more provocative actions, including missile launches\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The tensions are \u201cnot for want of seeking engagement and trying to find a way forward through diplomacy\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken visited by coincidence on the anniversary of the violent January 6 riot<\/a> at the US Capitol by Trump\u2019s supporters, after he refused to accept defeat to Biden in the 2020 presidential election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Supporters of Yoon have waved US flags and invoked Trump by waving signs with his slogan \u201cStop the Steal\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken, whose hotel was within earshot of rowdy protests by supporters and opponents of Yoon, steered clear of taking sides in the bitterly divided country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He repeated US concern over Yoon\u2019s brief imposition of martial law on December 3 and saluted the \u201cdemocratic resilience\u201d of South Korea, without commenting on attempts to arrest the president.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe United States has full confidence in South Korea\u2019s institutions, and we reaffirm our unwavering support for the Korean people as they work tirelessly to uphold those institutions,\u201d Blinken said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yoon had earlier been a darling of the Biden administration. He was selected to lead a global democracy summit and delighted Washington by moving to turn the page on decades of friction with Japan, a fellow US ally that is also home to thousands of US troops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yoon joined Biden and Japan\u2019s then-prime minister Fumio Kishida in 2023 for a landmark three-way summit at the Camp David presidential retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n South Korea\u2019s \u201cforeign policy direction will remain unchanged. I made this clear,\u201d Cho told Blinken.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Blinken also met acting president Choi Sang-mok, a technocrat in the role just over a week, whose office said that South Korea remained committed to the \u201cprinciples and agreements from the Camp David summit\u201d and to a \u201cstrong Korea-US alliance\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n South Korea\u2019s progressive opposition, which has made Yoon\u2019s life miserable from parliament and is increasingly ascendant since the president\u2019s power grab, historically has taken a harder line on Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It has also favoured a more diplomatic approach with North Korea than the hawkish Yoon.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" North Korea on Monday fired a missile as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited South Korea, where he warned Pyongyang was working ever more closely with Russia on advanced space technology. Blinken\u2019s trip came as investigators were trying to arrest conservative President Yoon Suk Yeol, who has entrenched himself in his residence after being impeached for […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":9485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[80,396],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia","category-latest"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9484"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.asiafreepress.com\/en_gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a>Changes set under Trump<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Promises of continuity<\/h2>\n\n\n\n