Written by: Anthony Man, Sun Sentinel
Just back from a trip to Japan and South Korea, Congresswoman Lois Frankel said Tuesday there is no ideal solution for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. It’s clear to her that that diplomacy — and not military action — is the path to avoiding an attack by North Korea that could result in widespread death and destruction.
Frankel, a Palm Beach County Democrat who is a strong critic of President Donald Trump, gave him a passing — though incomplete — grade on his handling of the situation thus far. “He has been, I think, more subdued than on other issues. And I would like him to stay subdued,” she said.
After a week in the region that included a stop at the Korean Demilitarized Zone, Frankel said that people she met “live their lives in fear. Not only because of an enemy that’s basically just across the street from them. But also because they don’t know whether or not they can trust the United States of America. That’s not a good thing.”
Frankel said there is a consensus that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is “unpredictable and irrational.”
“But there is a very big concern about whether or not our president will act rationally,” she said. “It’s an unknown to folks, and I think what doubled up the fear is that all of a sudden you see the [U.S.] bombing in Syria, the bombing in Afghanistan … and this is sort of a macho president.”
Frankel said government officials were more comfortable with the idea of Trump handling the situation than everyday people on the streets of the capital cities of Tokyo and Seoul. “Ordinary people are scared because they don’t know yet,” she said.
Frankel cautioned against the notion that the U.S. can take unilateral military action to stop North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. “We can’t just pop off and drop a bomb on North Korea and think everything’s going to be OK. It just doesn’t work like that. It’s a complicated puzzle,” she said.
Virtually everyone Frankel and the American delegation met with said a preemptive military strike by the U.S. was unlikely to stop North Korea’s nuclear program and “undoubtedly would result in a counter attack by North Korea on Seoul, South Korea, annihilating 25 million people and thousands and thousands of United States military personnel.” Frankel’s son, who spent nine years in the Marines, spent part of that time in Japan and South Korea.
If the president ever thinks military action is appropriate, Frankel said he should consult Congress. “There shouldn’t even be a request for that now, but absolutely none without getting authorization from Congress, which we should not give to him at this point.”
She called for exercising every other avenue: direct and indirect sanctions against North Korea, pressure on and engagement with China, and cyber tactics that don’t involve offensive military action. She credited Trump for working with China to influence its neighbor. And she said Trump’s meetings in February with the Japanese prime minister, which included hosting him at the Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, “was a good reach out for the president.”
Frankel said Japan and South Korea need to be fully consulted on whatever the U.S. decides to do. She also recommended that the Trump administration accelerate the process of getting ambassadors in place to those allies.
In a trip and meetings arranged for about 15 lawmakers by the nonpartisan Aspen Institute, Frankel met with government officials — including the South Korean foreign minister and the prime minister of Japan — parliamentarians, scholars, retired ambassadors, military leaders and scholars.
She tacked a day on the end of the trip, after the organized meetings ended, to meet South Korean people on her own. “I stayed a day to talk to ordinary people. I wanted to get a sense of the country sort of on my own, not anybody organizing me.”
The delegation visited the Korean Demilitarized Zone, the buffer between North Korea and South Korea — the same place Vice President Mike Pence visited Monday to deliver a warning that North Korea “should not mistake the resolve of the United States of America to stand with our allies.”
Frankel said it was good for Pence to visit the region, but said a more measured tone by Pence would have been preferable than showing up in a bomber jacket to talk tough. “I would have liked to see the vice president taking more of a diplomatic approach,” Frankel said.
Just feet away from North Korea, one of the pictures Frankel took shows two North Korean soldiers taking pictures of her and other members of the American delegation through a window.
One sobering takeaway from the trip, she said, was seeing how physically close the different sides are. “It’s almost like when you go to Israel and you see how close the enemies are to them,” she said. So close she said, it would be as if “Broward County was going to attack Palm Beach County. You get a sense when you are there of how close the enemy is. They have no buffer.”
Frankel, who is a member of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has been to several danger spots as a member of Congress since 2013, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Egypt and the Ukraine. She said her time in South Korea wasn’t scarier than those countries. Among the reasons, she said, was Pence’s trip to the region, which meant U.S. military action during that time was exceedingly unlikely.
Frankel returned home to West Palm Beach on Sunday and discussed the trip Tuesday in a telephone interview.