hankyoreh

Chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services

Saenuri Party (NFP) leader Kim Moo-sung, who is currently visiting the US, said on July 27 that he “will make clear during the trip that the US comes before China.”

“There seem to be people even in the US, our only ally, who view South Korea with suspicion. We must not forget that the US is our unrivaled and irreplaceable ally,” Kim said during a dinner on Tuesday with South Korean correspondents in Washington, D.C.

Kim‘s remarks are being interpreted as meaning that he intends to use this trip to dispel US concerns that South Korea has been getting closer to China since Park Geun-hye became president.

“Just as the US resolved the Iranian nuclear weapons problem and established diplomatic relations with Cuba, we need a creative solution that goes beyond strategic patience to resolve the issue of North Korean nuclear weapons, which is a major headache for the international community,” Kim said in a speech to American experts on the Korean peninsula at the Woodrow Wilson Center earlier on Tuesday.

During a meeting with John McCain, Chair of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, Kim spoke of the historical issues dividing South Korea and Japan. “The statement of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which will be released on Aug. 15, the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, must not retreat from the Murayama Statement on the 50th anniversary and the Koizumi Statement on the 60th anniversary,” Kim said.

McCain said that he asks Japanese officials to apologize whenever he meets them and that he would continue to do so.

“I’m concerned about what the scheming of the progressives and leftists will do to Korea,” Kim said during a meeting with Korean-Americans on Tuesday [이날] afternoon. “The Saenuri Party will work to stop the scheming of the progressives and leftists. The surest way of doing that is for the Saenuri Party to win more elections.”

By Hwang Jun-beom and Yi Yong-in, staff reporters in Washington D.C.

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