Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Sources familiar with the situation said Friday that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will visit So...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Sources familiar with the situation said Friday that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will visit South Korea next month to talk about rising inflation, sanctions against Russia, and possible new sanctions against North Korea over its nuclear programme.
Sources say that Yellen will meet with top South Korean officials while she is in Asia for a meeting of finance officials from the Group of 20 major economies.
A Treasury spokesman didn't want to say anything.
Details aren't set in stone yet, but Yellen could meet with South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin and Finance Minister Choo Kyung-ho to talk about North Korea. Intelligence officials on both sides of the Pacific are worried that North Korea is getting ready to do its first nuclear test in five years.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told top military officials at the end of a meeting on Friday that he wanted to improve North Korea's defences. This led South Koreans to think that Pyongyang might be adding tactical nuclear weapons to its arsenal.
Park told a press conference last week that he and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken "need to push for a new UN Security Council resolution to deal with North Korea's provocation" and that if Pyongyang goes ahead with the test, "the alliance and the international community will respond with a united and firm response."
Because North Korea is cut off from the global financial system, it is also better able to deal with sanctions from the US and other countries.
One of the sources said that when Yellen goes to Seoul, she plans to talk about how effective the broad sanctions against Russia are because of its war in Ukraine.
There will be a lot of talk about the economy, since both Washington and Seoul are trying to bring down inflation rates that have upset consumers.
