President Moon Jae-in said Tuesday that unilateral military action over Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program would be intolerable.
SEOUL, South Korea — With his public alarmed by President Trump’s recent threats to North Korea, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea issued an unusually blunt rebuke to the United States on Tuesday, warning that any unilateral military action against the North over its nuclear weapons program would be intolerable.
“No one should be allowed to decide on a military action on the Korean Peninsula without South Korean agreement, ” Mr. Moon said in a nationally televised speech.
As a candidate for the presidency, Mr. Moon, a liberal who took office in May, said he would “ say no to the Americans ” if necessary. But he has aligned South Korea more closely with its military ally than many had expected. Though he suspended the deployment of a United States missile defense system opposed by China, he reversed that decision last month after North Korea tested two intercontinental ballistic missiles.
But President Trump’s threat to bring “fire and fury” to North Korea, along with other statements from American officials about the possibility of war, has unnerved many South Koreans and put pressure on Mr. Moon to live up to his campaign promise. “Our government will do everything it can to prevent war from breaking out, ” he said in his speech Tuesday.
Mr. Moon’s pushback was the latest indication that Mr. Trump’s unorthodox approach to foreign policy, coupled with Pyongyang’s rapid progress toward its goal of nuclear missiles that can reach the mainland United States, was putting new strain on the longstanding alliance. And it underscored how Mr. Trump’s volatile language is sowing division with an ally whose help would be vital to the success of any American military campaign on the divided peninsula.
Since the 1950-53 Korean War, South Koreans have grown used to bellicose rhetoric from North Korea, like its routine threats to unleash “a sea of fire” on Seoul, the capital, which is within range of the North’s artillery.
But they had never seen an American president taunt the North with similar language, until Mr. Trump threatened it with “fire and fury like the world has never seen” and said his country’s military options were “locked and loaded.”
”The Americans had always been an ally who would prevent, not start, war on the Korean Peninsula, ” said Kim Ji-woon, a college student attending a rally on Monday in central Seoul that featured a large banner reading: “Trump, shut up!” “With his trash war talk, Trump makes me wonder what’s the use of the alliance.”
Mr. Moon has been careful not to do anything that his conservative enemies could use to accuse him of undermining the relationship with the United States.
