Damage Control: US May Seek to Fix 'Political Gaffe' in Relations With N Korea

Statements made by high-ranking South Korean and US government officials suggest that Washington may be attempting to tone down its rhetoric after the somewhat dramatic exchange between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in declared recently that there won’t be a "war again on the Korean Peninsula."

The South Korean leader said he believes that the threat of a military action is needed merely to put pressure on Pyongyang, and does not imply the inevitability of an actual attack.

Commenting on this rather optimistic forecast, Asia-Pacific affairs expert Vladimir Terekhov told Radio Sputnik that top US officials have also made similar remarks recently.

"The South Korean president is certain about the fact that there won’t be a war on the Korean Peninsula because earlier US Secretary Rex Tillerson and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford said the same thing. And the latter two said it in order to clarify and moderate that political gaffe made by President Donald Trump when he started trading barbs with Kim Jong Un about ‘who’s going to torch who faster’," Terekhov said.

Earlier the Russian and Chinese foreign ministries issued a joint statement on the situation at the Korean Peninsula, suggesting that North Korea should impose a moratorium on nuclear weapon tests and ballistic missile launches while the US and South Korea should avoid conducting military drills in the region. The United States however did not support this initiative.

Meanwhile, Terekhov remarked that the US apparently still does not have a clear idea on how to resolve this crisis.

"The biggest problem lies in the US. They don’t have a comprehensive plan, they don’t have a clear idea about what to do. So right now all options are probably on the table. The Russian-Chinese proposal wasn’t exactly scrapped as, in my opinion, it offers a most realistic way out of a dangerous downward spiral: the joint US-South Korean drills and the North Korean response. Russia and China offered to halt this spiral movement, if only for a time. During this pause the six-party commission could be convened, but the US is apparently not ready to expand the format, thus hampering the progress," he explained.

The situation on the Korean Peninsula escalated after a heated exchange between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and US President Donald Trump. While Kim threatened to launch ballistic missiles at the vicinity of the island of Guam, home of a strategic US military base, Trump promised to respond by doing something to North Korea "the likes of which nobody has seen before".