(Seoul) The American and South Korean defense ministers revised, on Monday, for the first time in a decade, their strategic military deterrence agreement to counter North Korea, a country with nuclear weapons.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin is in Seoul for an annual security meeting with his South Korean counterpart Shin Won-sik, as the allies step up defense cooperation in the face of Pyongyang’s growing ballistic and nuclear threats .
At the security consultative meeting, defense chiefs reviewed the Tailored Deterrence Strategy (TDS), an agreement on joint deterrence strategies to counter North Korean nuclear weapons, among others, according to a joint statement .
The revision means the agreement will allow allies to “more effectively deter and respond to the development of the DPRK’s nuclear, among other weapons of mass destruction, and non-nuclear capabilities with strategic impacts,” he said.
First adopted in 2013, the allies were working to update the document to better reflect Pyongyang’s rapidly evolving nuclear and missile threats, according to the Yonhap news agency.
This year, Seoul and Washington held joint military exercises involving state-of-the-art stealth aircraft and US strategic assets.
A US nuclear submarine made a stopover in South Korea in July – the first in four decades – while a US B-52 bomber landed on the Korean peninsula “for the first time this century”, M noted .Austin at a press conference after the meeting.
“I am proud to say that our alliance is stronger than ever,” he said.
According to South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-Sik, despite numerous conflicts around the world, Seoul and Washington maintain “the most powerful alliance in history and in the world.”
“As the leaders of the two countries have confirmed, if North Korea provokes war, it is the Kim Jong-un regime that will be eliminated, and it is a unification based on the liberal democratic order led by the Republic of Korea which will be established,” he added.
The senior officials agreed to work closely to “expand the scale and types of field exercises” in line with the combined trainings next year, according to the joint statement.
“Given the DPRK’s advanced nuclear and ballistic capabilities and the institutionalization of its nuclear force policy, they committed to further discussing the inclusion of the DPRK’s nuclear use in a future exercise combined US-Korean cooperation,” the statement said.