Seoul (CNN)Confused, shocked, bewildered. Just a few of the words used in recent days to describe Japan and South Korea’s reaction to some of Donald Trump’s latest comments about the region.
The front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination stunned two of America’s strongest allies with the suggestion that the U.S. military would be withdrawn from their shores, with nuclear weapons replacing them.There are currently 54,000 U.S. troops stationed in Japan and 28,500 in South Korea.
“Japan is better if it protects itself against this maniac of North Korea,” Trump told CNN’s Anderson Cooper Tuesday. “We are better off frankly if South Korea is going to start protecting itself … they have to protect themselves or they have to pay us.”[…]Japan remains the only country to have had nuclear weapons used against it and has had a non-nuclear policy and pacifist constitution since the end of World War II.Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida added, “It is impossible that Japan will arm itself with nuclear weapons.”[…]South Korea has a small minority who think Trump may have a point and welcome the idea of nuclear weapons.Academic Cheong Seong-Chang from the non-profit think-tank the Sejong Institute said, “If we have nuclear weapons, we’ll be in a much better position to deal with North Korea.”But his feeling is not mainstream.
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