Seoul Says Pelosi DMZ Visit Sends Clear Message To North

Seoul, Aug 4 (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 4th Aug, 2022 ) :After her high-profile trip to Taiwan, US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was in South Korea Thursday where her agenda included a visit to the heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) -- but not a meeting with the country's president.

Pelosi, who arrived in Seoul late Wednesday, met top parliamentary officials in the capital before her scheduled trip to the border with the nuclear-armed North, where the two neighbours' forces stand face to face, a South Korean official said.

She will be the highest-ranking US official to visit the Joint Security Area (JSA) and inter-Korean truce village of Panmunjom since then president Donald Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong Un there in 2019.

But those talks collapsed and North Korea has conducted a record-breaking blitz of weapons tests so far this year, including firing an intercontinental ballistic missile at full range for the first time since 2017.

Pelosi discussed the "grave situation" and growing threat posed by North Korea's nuclear weapons programmes with her South Korean counterpart, National Assembly Speaker Kim Jin-pyo.

And her trip to the DMZ is seen by President Yoon Suk-yeol as "a sign of strong deterrence between South Korea and the US against North Korea," an official from his office said Thursday.