Obama salutes US troops and condemns North Korea

Barack Obama saluted the bravery of US troops who defended South Korea during its war with North Korea and condemned the communist North for continuing on a course that he said deepened its isolation and the poverty of its people.

Speaking at an army garrison in South Korea, where the US keeps a presence of more than 28,000 troops, the president said North Korea knew the path to prosperity and suggested its leaders take it.

“Because the Korean War ended where it began geographically, some used the phrase ’Die for a Tie’ to describe the sacrifice of those who fought here,” Mr Obama said in his speech marking America’s Veterans Day.

“But as we look around at this thriving democracy and its grateful, hopeful citizens, one thing is clear: this was no tie. This was a victory.

“It was a victory then, and it is a victory today.”

The president was in Seoul for meetings of the G20 group of economic nations.

He had arrived hoping to seal an elusive trade deal with South Korea that could mean jobs and new markets for frustrated businesses and workers back home. But the deal was still in the balance in the last hours, slowed by US demands over South Korea’s car trade and its market for US beef.

Under worldwide pressure, Mr Obama also told global leaders that they shared the burden with the US to fix trade-stifling imbalances and currency disputes that endangered economic recoveries everywhere. He promised the US would do its part but declared: “The world is looking to us to work together.”

In the Veterans Day address, Mr Obama said the Korean peninsula provided the world’s clearest contrast between a society that was open and one that was closed, between a dynamic, growing nation like South Korea and a North Korea “that would rather starve its people”.

“It’s a contrast so stark you can see it from space as the brilliant lights of Seoul give way to utter darkness in the North,” he said, adding that it was a direct result of the path chosen by the reclusive, communist North.

Mr Obama said the US “will never waver” in its commitment to South Korea’s security and that North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons would only lead to more isolation and less security.

He urged Pyongyang to take another path, a road that he said would offer its people growing opportunity instead of crushing poverty.

The president spoke inside a packed gymnasium, addressing a uniformed audience of service members from the different branches of the US military.

He condemned North Korea and said its circumstances were not “an accident of history” but a direct result of the path it had chosen – “a path of confrontation and provocation” that he said included its relentless pursuit of the nuclear weapons and the deadly sinking of a South Korean warship.

“In the wake of this aggression, Pyongyang should not be mistaken: the US will never waver in our commitment to the security of the Republic of Korea,” the president said.

“The alliance between our two nations has never been stronger, and along the with the rest of the world, we have made it clear that North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons will only lead to more isolation and less security.”