Trump will not visit DMZ during Asia trip
President Trump will not visit the Korean Demilitarized Zone on his 12-day trip to Asia that begins this week, a senior administration official said Tuesday.
The official pinned the decision on a busy schedule, saying that the president would not have time to visit both the DMZ and complete a planned visit with U.S. and South Korean troops at Camp Humphreys, a U.S. Army garrison about 50 miles south of Seoul.
{mosads}”The president is not going to visit the DMZ,” the official said. “There’s not enough time in the schedule. It would have had to have been the DMZ or Camp Humphreys.”
“We thought it made more sense in terms of its messaging, in terms of the chance to address families and troops there and highlight, at [South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s] invitation, South Korea’s role in sharing the burden of supporting this critical alliance,” he continued.
The White House has hinted heavily that Trump would not make the trip to the heavily-guarded dividing buffer that has stood between North and South Korea since the close of the Korean War.
Every American president since Ronald Reagan — with the exception of George H.W. Bush — has made a visit to the area, leading to speculation that Trump would follow suit.
But some aides and regional experts have feared a presidential visit would set off a fuse in the nuclear standoff between the U.S. and North Korea.
The official on Tuesday emphasized that a “minority” of American presidents have visited the DMZ in the 64 years since the ceasefire.
The official noted that Vice President Pence, Defense Secretary James Mattis, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have all made visits to the DMZ.
“It’s becoming a bit of a cliche, frankly,” the official said.
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