US Vice President Kamala Harris meets South Korean PM Han Duck-soo in Tokyo
US Vice President Kamala Harris met with South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo in Japan on Tuesday, a few days before flying out to Seoul.
US Vice President Kamala Harris met with South Korean Prime Minister Han Duck-soo in Japan on Tuesday, a few days before flying out to Seoul.
Harris is in Tokyo for the state funeral of assassinated former Japanese leader Shinzo Abe.
Abe, a former prime minister who was assassinated in July, will be honored on Tuesday, and Harris is leading a US delegation to pay its respects.
Han during a meeting early Tuesday said Harris will make a trip to the Demilitarized Zone, the border area with North Korea that is jointly controlled by the American-led United Nations Command and North Korea.
A White House official, speaking on the condition on anonymity, confirmed that Harris will tour sites at the DMZ and visit with troops there to demonstrate that the US commitment to South Korea’s defense is “ironclad.”
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Her visit, the first by a ranking US official since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went to the DMZ in August, will come the same week North Korea test-fired a short-range ballistic missile in apparent response to joint military exercises between the US and Korea.
Harris will be the highest-level American to go to the DMZ since former President Donald Trump visited in 2019 for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Harris, who is scheduled to spend three nights in Tokyo, is visiting Japan at a politically fraught moment. Kishida’s decision to hold a state funeral for Abe, a conservative nationalist, has been controversial in a country where such memorials are uncommon, and some oppose honoring him in this way.
