Trump Strikes Friendly Note with South Korea

President Donald Trump will meet with South Korean president Moon Jae-in today, his latest diplomatic meeting focusing on how to deal with Korea’s troublesome neighbors to the north.

President Moon, who was elected last month after his predecessor was impeached, is a liberal who has advocated for a softer diplomatic approach toward North Korea’s bellicose Kim regime in the past. But Moon struck a different tone after he arrived in the U.S. on Wednesday, pledging to stand with America as it pursues the goal of total North Korean nuclear disarmament.

“Together we will achieve the dismantlement of North Korea’s nuclear program, peace on the Korean Peninsula and eventually peace in Northeast Asia,” Moon said during a visit to a Marine Corps base in Virginia.

Earlier on Wednesday, the White House welcomed South Korea’s support and insisted that the U.S. has only just begun to take a hard economic line on North Korea.

“We are adding pressure and have really only begun to do so,” a White House official told reporters in an on background call. “It’s really the one approach that we haven’t tried yet—acute economic pressure on North Korea. That campaign is only now gathering momentum. And the president is determined to follow through with that and to see how it works.”