‘Hello. Period’: Biden to Kim

Seoul – Before President Joe Biden left South Korea for Japan yesterday, he offered a brief message to Kim Jong-Un, whose nuclear sabre-rattling has risked overshadowing the US leader’s first Asia trip: “Hello. Period.”

He offered the succinct greeting when reporters asked whether he had anything to say to North Korea’s leader, highlighting his administration’s openness to dialogue with Pyongyang, even as they look to ramp up joint military exercises with South Korea.

Biden said he was “not concerned” about the risks of a fresh weapons test while he was in the region – something US officials have warned of repeatedly – saying: “We are prepared for anything North Korea does.”

He has spent two days with South Korea’s newly elected President Yoon Suk-yeol, with the pair saying on Saturday that “considering the evolving threat” from Pyongyang, they were looking at expanding the “scope and scale” of joint military exercises.

North Korea has conducted a blitz of sanctions-busting weapons tests this year, with satellite imagery indicating a nuclear test is looming.

Joint exercises had been scaled back, but Yoon said he and Biden discussed possible “joint drills to prepare for a nuclear attack” and called for more tactical US assets to be deployed to the region. –