Pence visits military base near Korean DMZ
CAMP BONIFAS, South Korea — The Latest on U.S. Vice President Mike Pence in South Korea (all times local):
9:35 a.m.
U.S. Vice President Mike Pence is visiting a military base near the Demilitarized Zone separating North and South Korea a day after the North conducted a failed missile launch.
Pence arrived at Camp Bonifas on Monday morning for a briefing with military leaders and to meet with American troops stationed there. He is in South Korea as part of a 10-day tour of Asia.
The joint U.S.-South Korean military camp is just outside the 2.5-mile-wide DMZ. Pence’s visit, full of Cold War symbolism, comes amid increasing tensions and heated rhetoric on the Korean Peninsula.
Pence has called North Korea’s failed missile launch a “provocation,” and President Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that China is working with the U.S. on the “North Korea problem.”
8 a.m.
President Donald Trump is asserting that China is working with the United States on “the North Korea problem.”
His vice president, Mike Pence, is telling American and South Korea service members that the North’s latest “provocation,” a failed missile launch shortly before his arrival in Seoul, has laid bare the risks they face.
While the North did not conduct a nuclear test, the specter of a potential escalated U.S. response is trailing Pence as he undertakes a 10-day trip to Asia amid increasing tensions and heated rhetoric.
Trump’s national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, is citing Trump’s recent decision to order missile strikes in Syria after a chemical attack blamed on the Assad government as a sign that the president “is clearly comfortable making tough decisions.”
