By Alex Jensen
SEOUL (AA) – South Korea is “confident” its alliance with the United States will stay strong whatever the outcome of the American presidential election this November, according to a Seoul government source Wednesday.
The assessment came within hours of U.S. presidential hopeful Donald Trump all but securing the Republican Party’s nomination.
“We are confident that regardless of the presidential election result, the alliance, based on the shared values of democracy and a market economy, will solidly develop,” a South Korean foreign ministry official told local news agency Yonhap on the condition of anonymity.
If Trump were to prevail in November’s election, onlookers might be concerned about the impact on Washington’s relationships with South Korea and Japan, as the mogul-turned-politician has repeatedly suggested they are getting a free ride in terms of American military support.
While tens of thousands of U.S. troops are stationed in both countries, the respective alliances offer a number of obvious advantages to Washington.
They include hundreds of millions of dollars, strategic positioning and an assurance that neither Seoul nor Tokyo will provoke a regional nuclear arms race.
The South’s commitment to the denuclearization of the peninsula also offers a moral position from which to demand North Korea’s abandonment of nuclear weapons.
But Trump’s stance appears to have prompted members of South Korea’s ruling conservative party to heighten calls this year for indigenous nuclear weapons, highlighting the possible consequences of weakened Seoul-Washington ties.
