Pascrell Urges Cooling of South Korea-Japan Tensions

WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. Rep. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ-09) today reacted to reports that South Korea and Japan were severing a joint agreement to share classified intelligence on the North Korea threat, part of growing tensions between the two stalwart American allies.

“The further aggravation of relations between two of our closest friends and allies does not help combat our shared threats in the region,” said Rep. Pascrell, who maintains long-standing ties with Korean-American and Japanese-American communities in New Jersey. “In the face of continuing North Korean nuclear aggression and Chinese encroachment, it is in our collective interests to work together in a constructive way. The trilateral information sharing agreement between the United States, South Korea and Japan is central to our shared regional security interests. But this breakdown is also a direct byproduct of the Trump’s administration’s decimation of our diplomatic core, undermining our international credibility, and spurious trade policy justifications. When taken together these desultory policies have opened a pandora’s box that have far-ranging unintended consequences. Strong and continued cooperation between the U.S. and our allies to meet the threats of a hostile world demands American leadership.”

###