U.S. Navy Admiral Harry Harris Jr, head of the Pacific Command, attends at a Fullerton Lecture on "Challenges, Opportunities and Innovation in the Indo-Asia-Pacific", in Singapore Thomson Reuters By David Brunnstrom and John Walcott

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Trump administration plans to nominate Admiral Harry Harris, the head of the U.S. Pacific Command who has already been nominated to be the next U.S. ambassador to Australia, to fill the long-vacant post of ambassador to South Korea instead, two senior U.S. officials said on Tuesday. Another source with knowledge of the situation said President Donald Trump’s nominee to be secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, had asked Harris to take the key post in Seoul, which has been vacant since Trump took office in January last year. Three U.S. officials confirmed the plan to nominate Harris, who was in Washington on Tuesday for a Senate committee hearing on his Australia nomination. “Our relationship with Australia is and remains steadfast.”

The sources spoke on condition of anonymity. Trump nominated Harris, who is known for his hawkish views on China’s military expansion, to serve as the American ambassador to Australia in February, but filling the key post in Seoul post has become even more of a priority as diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis over North Korea’s nuclear weapons have intensified. The Trump administration plans to overturn its nomination of Admiral Harry Harris as the next United States ambassador to Australia, putting him forward as envoy to South Korea instead ahead of Donald Trump's planned meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Pompeo told his Senate confirmation hearing this month that filling Seoul and a handful of other diplomatic posts required “immediate attention.”

“I will find what I believe to be the best fit to execute America’s diplomatic mission around the world,” he said. Cha, a widely respected academic and former Bush administration official, said in a Washington Post op-ed earlier this year that the answer to the "real and unprecedented threats" North Korea presents is not, "as some Trump administration officials have suggested, a preventive military strike." Harris told the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee last month the United States could not be overly optimistic about the outcome of a Trump-Kim summit and must go into it with “eyes wide open.”

He said he was encouraged by the prospect of a summit, but that North Korea remained the biggest security threat in the Asia-Pacific region.
It is announced that Admiral Harry B. Harris may be nominated as the new U.S. Ambassador to South Korea.