US says S Korea alliance ‘important’ to counter China, N Korea

Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin due to hold talks with their South Korean counterparts on security challenges from Beijing and Pyongyang.

US President Joe Biden’s defence and foreign policy chiefs have arrived in South Korea for the second leg of a regional tour aimed at boosting Washington’s Asian alliances to better deal with growing challenges from China and North Korea. While in Seoul, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the defence secretary, Lloyd Austin, will meet their South Korean counterparts for separate talks on Wednesday and hold a joint “two plus two” meeting on Thursday, the first such contact between the two countries in five years. Blinken and Lloyd’s Asian tour is the first overseas trip by top-level members of Biden’s administration. On Tuesday, the pair were in Japan’s capital, Tokyo, where they joined forces with Japanese officials to criticise China’s “coercion and aggression” and reaffirm their commitment to ridding North Korea of all its nuclear bombs.