[AP/Yonhap News Photo]
US President-elect Donald Trump appears to lack a plan on how to deal with North Korea even though his administration is set to take off in less than a month, a US expert said.
Bonnie Glaser, senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), also said in an interview with CBS television that the Trump foreign policy team doesn't seem to have a full strategy yet on China.
North Korea is "not an issue that Trump knows a lot about," Glaser said, adding that the concern for the United States is that the North Koreans could pose an existential threat to the homeland if they can make a nuclear warhead that can potentially reach US territory.
"Do we have a strategy that focuses on defense? Do we take a much more aggressive posture against North Korea?" Glaser said, wondering about Trump's plan. "Some people are raising the possibility of a pre-emptive strike on a missile, if it's on a launch pad, because we don't know what's atop that missile, whether it's a satellite or a nuclear warhead.
"There may be some discussions about whether we really need to try to cut off trade and harm North Korea's economy, go beyond sanctions that are really focused on depriving North Korea of weapons of mass destruction," she said.'
Most American experts agree that North Korea will be one of the biggest problems facing the Trump administration as the communist nation stepped up its development of a nuclear-tipped missile capable of reaching the continental U.S.
(Yonhap)
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