SEOUL: US Vice President Kamala Harris will arrive in South Korea on Thursday just a day after North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles amid an escalation of Pyongyang's continued nuke testing.
Harris, who is travelling to South Korea from Japan, will make her first visit to the country as Vice President, reports Yonhap News Agency.
The last time a US Vice President visited South Korea was in February 2018, when Mike Pence led a delegation to the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games.
Harris is scheduled to meet President Yoon Suk-yeol shortly after her arrival in Seoul.
On Wednesday night, North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea in apparent protest of an ongoing South Korea-US military exercise involving an American aircraft carrier.
The North had also conducted a similar short-range ballistic missile test on Sunday.
During her day-long trip, Harris will underscore Washington's commitment to the defence of its ally, a senior administration official in Washington told reporters earlier.
"The key messaging that she's talking about on this trip is how our defence commitments are ironclad," the official said of the visit, which will include a stop in the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two Koreas.
Harris' visit to the DMZ comes less than two months after US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi went there.
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