Biden meets South Korea leader, pledges US will 'rebalance' Pacific

Vice President Joe Biden declared Friday that the United States’ pledge to expand its Asian footprint and "rebalance" the Pacific region should not be doubted, as he met with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

Visiting the Korean Peninsula – which is technically in a state of war – Biden said the U.S. would continue to place its bet on its staunch ally South Korea, where nearly 30,000 American troops remain six decades after the end of the Korean War. He said the U.S. and South Korea had much to plan for their joint journey for the next 60 years, speaking as he neared the end of a weeklong Asia tour aimed at reinforcing the message of U.S. resolve to be a Pacific power.

"I want to make one thing absolutely clear: President Obama's decision to rebalance the Pacific Basin is not in question," Biden said. "The United States never says anything it does not do." He repeated his last line to drive the point home.

Welcoming Biden at her office amid the sprawling gardens of Seoul's Blue House, Park alluded to the array of frictions in the region, where South Korea and Japan are feuding over historical enmities, China is asserting itself more forcefully with its neighbors, and concerns about North Korea are never far from the forefront.

"At a time when we have recently been seeing growing volatility and tensions in northeast Asia, it is very helpful for peace in northeast Asia to have a vice president with such profound insight into foreign affairs travel to this region," she said through a translator.

After lunching with the South Korean leader, Biden was set to deliver a speech Friday about U.S.-Asia policy and the country’s relationship with South Korea. Before returning to Washington on Saturday, Biden was to lay a wreath at a ceremony honoring fallen U.S. troops, and to visit the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas.

Concerns about North Korea's nuclear program were a major topic earlier in the week, when Biden met for more than five hours with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. The two leaders strategized about how to increase pressure on the North in hopes of persuading the country to give up its nuclear weapons, senior Obama administration officials said. These officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment by name.

Adding to tensions on the peninsula are U.S. concerns about an 85-year-old American tourist that Pyongyang has been detaining for more than a month. Meanwhile, South Korea's spy agency believes that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's powerful uncle may have been dismissed from his posts last month, and two of his aides publicly executed. It has not been possible to independently confirm that claim.

The Associated Press