US President Joe Biden’s top diplomat will talk to his South Korean counterpart “very soon” and Pentagon officials have been in contact with their opposite numbers in the country “at multiple levels” following South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol’s brief imposition of martial law, according to two American government spokesmen.
“There are many questions that need to be answered regarding the decisions surrounding those developments,” US State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters in a briefing in Washington on Thursday.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has “not had the opportunity to speak to his counterpart yet, but this is a counterpart he is in touch with regularly and expects to talk to at some point very soon”.
News that Blinken plans to talk to South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul came a day after the American envoy’s deputy, Kurt Campbell, called Yoon’s controversial move “problematic” and “illegitimate”.
The criticism coincided with calls domestically for the South Korean leader to step down. The country’s opposition has also filed a motion to impeach Yoon as soon as Saturday.
Yoon declared martial law in the country in a late-night announcement on Tuesday, citing anti-state forces threatening democracy and an opposition camp working in conjunction with arch-rival North Korea.
