Over the last few days, reactions to President Obama’s last state of the union address have been mixed. Most of the opinions have been split along partisan lines. But in one Asian country, a lot of attention is being paid to what was not said. HPR’s Bill Dorman has details in today’s Asia Minute.
North Korea did not get a single direct mention in President Obama’s State of the Union address. That caught the attention of South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper—which criticized the omission in an editorial headlined “Obama Speech Shows He Cares Little About North Korea.” Not so, says a top aide to the president.
Less than a week before the speech, North Korea conducted its fourth nuclear test. Korea’s Joong Ang Daily quotes presidential adviser Ben Rhodes as saying that leaving North Korean leader Kim Jong Un out of the speech was a deliberate decision, depriving him of undue attention. Rhodes said Kim would “probably like nothing more than for the president to spend a lot of time talking about him in the State of the Union.”
2013 was the last time North Korea got a direct mention in the state of the union address.
Korea’s Yonhap news agency said the president “had widely been expected to mention North Korea” in the speech, but also quotes Rhodes as saying that dealing with Pyongyang remains “a huge priority.”
Not huge enough according to the Chosun Ilbo, which complains that, quote, “compared to the U.S. government’s achievements in getting Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions and pushing for more democracy in Burma, it has practically ignored the North Korean nuclear threat”
