U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will meet top South Korean political leaders on Thursday, a day after she concluded her high-profile visit to Taiwan by renewing Washington's “ironclad” commitment to defending democracy on the self-governing island despite vehement protests from China.
Pelosi and other members of Congress flew to South Korea on Wednesday evening as part of their Asian tour that already took them to Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan. After South Korea, they will travel to Japan.
If that visit occurs, Pelosi would be the highest-level American to go to the Joint Security Area since then-President Donald Trump went there in 2019 for a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Also on Thursday afternoon, Pelosi will speak by phone with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, who is on a vacation this week, according to Yoon's office. No face-to-face meeting has been arranged between them. Yoon, a conservative, took office in May with a vow to boost South Korea's military alliance with the United States and take a tougher line on North Korean provocations.
The Biden administration and Pelosi have said the United States remains committed to the so-called one-China policy, which recognizes Beijing but allows informal relations and defense ties with Taipei. The administration discouraged but did not prevent Pelosi from visiting. “Facing deliberately heightened military threats, Taiwan will not back down,” Tsai said at her meeting with Pelosi. “We will firmly uphold our nation's sovereignty and continue to hold the line of defense for democracy.”
Pelosi noted that congressional support for Taiwan is bipartisan, and she praised the island's democracy. She stopped short of saying that the U.S would defend Taiwan militarily and emphasized that Congress is “committed to the security of Taiwan, in order to have Taiwan be able to most effectively defend themselves.”
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