WASHINGTON: The United States plans to hold table-top drills and expand other areas of defense cooperation with South Korea, but is not considering joint nuclear exercises with Seoul, according to a senior U.S. administration official.
The U.S. announcement came after South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said in an interview Monday the United States and South Korea were in talks meant to give Seoul a bigger role in the operation of U.S. nuclear forces.
Yoon told the conservative Chosun Ilbo newspaper the discussions centered on joint planning and exercises with U.S. nuclear forces — a process he envisioned would have the same effect as “nuclear sharing.”
Asked late Monday whether he was discussing joint nuclear exercises with South Korea, U.S. President Joe Biden replied, “No.” Biden, who was returning from a trip to the eastern U.S. state of Kentucky, did not elaborate.
In a statement emailed late Tuesday to VOA, a senior U.S. official attempted to clarify the situation by saying that the United States and South Korea are “working together to strengthen extended deterrence, including eventually through table-top exercises that will explore our joint response to a range of scenarios, including nuclear use by the DPRK.”
North Korea — also known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — last year launched a record number of ballistic missiles and on Sunday vowed to “exponentially increase” production of its nuclear warheads.
North Korea’s recent actions and statements have caused “increasing concern,” the U.S. official added.
Both the U.S. and South Korean presidential offices later denied any contradiction between the Biden and Yoon comments, noting that since South Korea is not a nuclear weapons state it cannot technically participate in “joint nuclear exercises.”
Though the situation may have arisen partly because of semantics, many analysts suggest it reflects behind-the-scenes tensions between the two allies over how best to involve South Korea in countering the North Korean threat.
Yoon, a conservative, has in the past pushed for Washington and Seoul to enter a NATO-style arrangement in which South Koreans would be trained to use U.S. nuclear weapons in a conflict. For now, it seems South Korea may have to be happy with more cooperation in other areas.
Following a November meeting between Biden and Yoon in Cambodia, both leaders tasked their teams to come up with a plan “for an effective coordinated response to a range of scenarios, including nuclear use by North Korea,” a White House National Security Council spokesperson said in a statement emailed to VOA.
“As the President said, we are not discussing joint nuclear exercises,” the NSC official added.
In a statement to reporters, South Korean presidential spokesperson Kim Eun-hye defended Yoon’s remarks. “South Korea and the United States are discussing information sharing, joint planning, and subsequent joint implementation plans in relation to U.S. nuclear assets, to respond to North Korea’s nuclear threat,” she said.
The United States has not stationed nuclear weapons in South Korea since the early 1990s, when it pulled tactical nukes from the peninsula as part of a disarmament deal with the Soviet Union. Instead, South Korea is protected by the U.S. “nuclear umbrella,” under which Washington vows to use all its capabilities, including nuclear weapons, to defend its ally.
In the interview Monday, Yoon suggested such ideas were outdated. “What we call ‘extended deterrence’ means that the United States will take care of everything, so South Korea should not worry about it,” Yoon said. “But now, it is difficult to convince our people with just this idea.”
As a presidential candidate in 2021, Yoon said he would ask the United States to either redeploy tactical nuclear weapons or agree to nuclear-sharing. The U.S. State Department quickly shot down the proposal.
(VOA)
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