USFK chief visits US to brief about North Korea

By Yi Whan-woo

U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) commander Gen. Vincent Brooks visited Washington D.C. and New York recently to discuss security on the Korean Peninsula with lawmakers and scholars, according to the Republic of Korea (ROK)-U.S. Combined Forces Command (CFC), Sunday.

The CFC said Brooks talked about North Korea’s saber rattling and the allies’ defense posture with members of Congress as well as scholars from the Council on Foreign Relations, the Center for a New American Security, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Brookings Institution.

According to USFK spokesman Army Col. Chad Carroll, Gen. Brooks completed the short visits to Washington and New York where he provided a firsthand account of the situation in Korea and the quality of the ROK-U.S. alliance.

Carroll said the USFK chief takes his role to educate the U.S. leadership about the security situation on the peninsula “very seriously.”

His visit came after Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) warned of a possible pre-emptive strike against North Korea in the wake of Pyongyang’s third intercontinental ballistic missile test, Nov. 29.

Hours after the ICBM test, he told CNN that the U.S., if necessary, would “have to go to war to stop” North Korea and that the country is “headed toward a war if things don’t change.”