SEOUL (Reuters) - The United States and its ally South Korea are in talks towards sending further strategic assets to the Korean peninsula, South Korea’s defense ministry said, a day after a U.S. B-52 bomber flew over South Korea in response to North Korea’s nuclear test last week.

“The United States and South Korea are continuously and closely having discussions on additional deployment of strategic assets,” Kim Min-seok, spokesman at the South Korean defense ministry, said on Monday.</s>The Koreas may be about the heat up with US aircraft carriers and submarines. Thomson Reuters In the aftermath of North Korea's quantum leap in nuclear strength, demonstrated by a ground-shaking sixth nuclear test, South Korea has called on the US to help "punish" Pyongyang.

"Opinions have converged that the direction which the government should take is to strengthen punishment," rather than dialogue, South Korea's Minister of National Defense, Song Young Moo said on Monday, according to NK News.

As part of a plan to punish North Korea for its provocative intercontinental ballistic missile and nuclear tests, Moon Jae In, South Korea's president, has looked to increase the country's offensive missile capabilities and import additional missile defense batteries from the US— both of which signal a more militaristic approach to dealing with Pyongyang.

Additionally, Song told South Korea's parliament he asked Washington to regularly deploy "strategic assets" such as aircraft carriers and nuclear-powered submarines to help punish the North.

"I told them it would good to deploy assets for extended deterrence regularly in waters around the Korean peninsula," said Song, according to NK News.

On Sunday, US Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said the US could offer a "massive" and "overwhelming" response to North Korea's provocations, but didn't specify how.

The placement of a carrier strike group, attack submarines, and possibly nuclear-capable bombers would not only signal US resolve and show incredible force, but actually mirrors practical steps the US and South Korea would make before conflict rather than pure signaling.

This escalation may therefore heighten the risk of miscalculation in the world's most militarized area.

However in April, during joint US-South Korean military exercises, the US deployed two aircraft carriers and two submarines to the Korean Peninsula that did not demonstrably deter North Korea from progressing its missile program. Neither did the move signal any actual military intent or action.

To be clear, all US submarines run on nuclear power, and the submarines referenced by Song likely lack nuclear bombs, and instead rely on cruise missiles like other US Navy ships. However, attack submarines could serve to police or demolish North Korea's own submarine force.

SEALs and divers from SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team (SDVT) 1 swim back to the guided-missile submarine USS Michigan (SSGN 727) during an exercise for certification on SEAL delivery vehicle operations in the southern Pacific Ocean. US Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kristopher Kirsop

Moon, a president who campaigned on reopening dialogue and engagement with North Korea, has recently turned to more militaristic approaches as North Korea's emerging thermonuclear ICBM capabilities test the US's resolve to protect South Korea.

On Sunday, in the aftermath of the nuclear test, US President Donald Trump seemed to confirm this shift.

"South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!" Trump tweeted.</s>SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States and South Korea are discussing deploying more U.S. “strategic assets” to the region after North Korea’s atomic test last week but not restoring U.S. nuclear arms to the South, a U.S. official said on Monday.

North Korea said it tested a hydrogen bomb on Wednesday, displeasing China, its main ally, and the United States, which said it believed the blast was an ordinary atomic test rather than a much more powerful hydrogen bomb.

In a show of force and support for allies in the region following North Korea’s nuclear test, its fourth since 2006, the United States on Sunday sent a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber based in Guam on a flight over South Korea.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ Party, said the United States was bringing the situation to the brink of war.

South Korean media said the United States may send to South Korea B-2 bombers, nuclear-powered submarines and F-22 stealth fighter jets.

“The United States and South Korea are continuously and closely having discussions on additional deployment of strategic assets,” the spokesman, Kim Min-seok, said.

In Washington, the U.S. official said they were discussing deploying “the whole range” of such assets but this meant such things as nuclear-capable bombers rather than restoring U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea for the first time in about a quarter century.

Former U.S. President George H.W. Bush decided in 1991 to remove U.S. nuclear weapons from South Korea.

“It could quickly escalate into an arms race, a very dangerous arms race, in the region,” said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Asked if such a step might spur North Korea to move more aggressively on its atomic weapons program, the official replied: “That’s a distinct possibility.”

Putting U.S. nuclear arms back in South Korea, he said, “would embolden the North Korean leadership to be more committed to pursuing their (weapons of mass destruction) capabilities and in fact it would give them a very convenient excuse to do so.”

China called for all sides to avoid raising tensions.

“We hope all parties can maintain restraint, proceed cautiously, and avoid successively escalating tensions,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei when asked about the U.S. B-52 flight.

The chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff warned that North Korea was likely to carry out further “sudden provocations”, a South Korean defense ministry official said.

The commander of the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea, General Curtis Scaparrotti, urged them to be vigilant.

On the diplomatic front, South Korea said its chief nuclear negotiator planned to meet his U.S. and Japanese counterparts on Wednesday to discuss a response to North Korea, and the next day, he would meet China’s nuclear envoy in Beijing.

South Korea and Japan used a military hotline for the first time after North Korea’s test, South Korea’s defense ministry said, in a sign the North is pushing the two old rivals closer together.

South Korea also said it would restrict access to the jointly run Kaesong industrial complex just north of the heavily militarized inter-Korean border to the “minimum necessary level” from Tuesday.

The complex, where South Korean factories employ North Korean workers, is an important source of revenue for the impoverished North.</s>South Korea's defense minister on Monday said it was worth reviewing the redeployment of American tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula to guard against the North, a step that analysts warn would sharply increase the risk of an accidental conflict.

As concern over Korea deepened following North Korea's huge nuclear test Sunday, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was "begging for war."

Here in Seoul, the Defense Ministry warned that Pyongyang might be preparing to launch another missile into the Pacific Ocean, perhaps an intercontinental ballistic missile theoretically capable of reaching the mainland United States.

President Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, spoke on the phone for 40 minutes Monday night, Korean time — some 34 hours after the nuclear test and more than 24 hours after Trump took to Twitter to criticize Moon's "talk of appeasement."

The two agreed to remove the limit on allowed payloads for South Korean missiles — something Seoul had been pushing for — as a way to increase deterrence against North Korea, according to a statement from South Korea's Blue House.

They agreed as well to work together to punish North Korea for Sunday's nuclear test, pledging "to strengthen joint military capabilities," a White House statement said, and to "maximize pressure on North Korea using all means at their disposal."

In a later phone call, Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel "reaffirmed" the necessity of coordinating a response at the United Nations.

At a U.N. Security Council meeting, Haley pressed for the "strongest possible" sanctions against the North. The administration plans to circulate a new sanctions draft this week. Haley did not spell out how she would overcome the objections of veto-wielding permanent members China and Russia.

But she cautioned, "War is never something the United States wants. We don't want it now. But our country's patience is not unlimited. We will defend our allies and our territory."

Haley ruled out the "freeze for freeze" proposal backed by China and Russia, which would suspend U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea in return for suspension of North Korean nuclear and missile tests.

"When a rogue regime has a nuclear weapon and an ICBM pointed at you, you do not take steps to lower your guard. No one would do that. We certainly won't," she said.

Instead, she reiterated a White House threat from Sunday to cut off trade with any countries that also trade with North Korea. That would presumably include China, with which the United States had nearly $650 billion worth of trade in goods and services last year.

"The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country that is giving aid to their reckless and dangerous nuclear intentions," she said.

Her remarks appeared to be unpersuasive. "China will never allow chaos and war" in Korea, said Liu Jieyi, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations. Sanctions alone will not solve the crisis, said Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia.

[North Korea defies predictions — again — with early grasp of weapons milestone ]

Earlier Monday, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that he asked his American counterpart, Jim Mattis, during talks at the Pentagon last week that strategic assets such as U.S. aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and B-52 bombers be sent to South Korea more regularly.

"I told him that it would be good for strategic assets to be sent regularly to the Korean Peninsula and that some South Korean lawmakers and media are strongly pushing for tactical nuclear weapons [to be redeployed]," Song told a parliamentary hearing on North Korea's nuclear test, without disclosing Mattis's response.

A poll that YTN, a cable news channel, commissioned in ­August found that 68 percent of respondents said they supported bringing tactical nuclear weapons back to South Korea.

"The redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons is an alternative worth a full review," Song said, echoing a position closely associated with conservatives in South Korea but not with progressives like Moon, who was elected president in May after vowing to engage with the North.

[Seoul tries to ignore Trump’s criticism: ‘They worry he’s kind of nuts,’ one observer says ]

The United States had about 100 nuclear-armed weapons, including short-range artillery, stationed in South Korea until 1991. Then President George H.W. Bush signed the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives and withdrew all tactical nuclear weapons that had been deployed abroad.

Shortly afterward, the two Koreas signed an agreement committing to making the peninsula free of nuclear weapons — a deal that North Korea violated by developing its own nuclear arms. But Pyongyang has maintained that Seoul has also broken its promise because remaining under the U.S. nuclear umbrella is tantamount, it says, to having such weapons.

After the defense minister spoke at the hearing, the South Korean president's office said that it was not considering redeploying tactical nuclear weapons. "Our government's firm stance on the nuclear-free peninsula remains unchanged," said Kim Dong-jo, a spokesman for Moon.

Military experts in the United States are almost universally opposed to the idea of deploying strategic or tactical weapons in South Korea.

"The thing that most concerns me about redeployment is that it introduces more room for miscalculation or unintended escalation," said Catherine Dill of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, Calif.

In that situation, the ability to react more quickly could be a negative factor.

From the perspective of the military alliance between the United States and South Korea, having long-range ballistic missiles or strategic bombers is "perfectly sufficient" to continue to deter North Korea, Dill said.

As alliance partners, the U.S. and South Korean militaries work in close cooperation, regularly conducting drills together. This includes sending "strategic assets" such as bombers stationed on the Pacific island of Guam over South Korea on a regular basis, and having submarines make port calls during exercises.

As the North Korean threat has increased this year, the United States has sent F-35 stealth aircraft and other strike fighters on flyovers across the southern half of the peninsula in a not-so-thinly veiled warning to Kim. The U.S. Pacific Command even released photos last week of B-1B Lancers dropping bombs on a range on the southern side of the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas.

But a growing number of policy­makers in Seoul say that Guam is too far away and that, if the South comes under attack from North Korea, it can't wait the two-plus hours it would take American bombers to arrive from their base in the Pacific.

"We need these strategic or tactical assets that can destroy North Korea's nuclear-capable missiles before they can inflict harm on us," said Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korean national security adviser.

"Right now they can retaliate, but by that time, tens of thousands of people might have been killed," Chun said. "We need a first layer of offensive weapons stationed closer to North Korea's nuclear and missile sites."

Jon Wolfsthal, a nuclear expert who served on President Barack Obama's National Security Council, said that in the South Korean context, "strategic assets" are all about giving "a tangible sense of reassurance" to the government in Seoul.

"The reassurance bucket is bottomless," Wolfsthal said. "You can pour stuff into it and it's never going to fill up."

South Korean officials have been asking for fighter jets and ballistic missile-equipped submarines to be based on the peninsula, and have long wanted B-1Bs and B-52s to land rather than just fly over — all to give a greater sense of U.S. commitment to South Korea.

But there are good logistical reasons that can't happen, ­Wolfsthal said. For one, South Korea doesn't have airstrips long enough for big, heavy B-52s, and second, the United States does not want its high-tech fighter jets sitting within North Korean artillery range.

[Don’t be surprised by North Korea’s missiles. Kim Jong Un is doing what he said he would. ]

South Korea has been flexing its military muscles in response to North Korea's provocations, practicing at dawn Monday for strikes on the North Korean nuclear test site at Punggye-ri.

The South Korean air force will stage a live-fire drill, launching Taurus air-to-surface guided missiles from F-15K fighter jets, later this month, the Defense Ministry said Monday. The missiles have a range of 300 miles — enough to carry out precision strikes on North Korea's key nuclear and missile sites.

The ministry also said it had seen signs of preparation for another North Korean ballistic missile launch, and South Korea's national intelligence service told lawmakers that it could be another intercontinental ballistic missile.

Yoonjung Seo in Seoul and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed

to this report.

Read more:

Trump’s tweets include jab at ally South Korea

Trump: ‘All options are on the table’ after North Korea launched missile over Japan

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news</s>SEOUL, Jan 11 (Reuters) - The United States and its ally South Korea are in talks towards sending further strategic U.S. assets to the Korean peninsula, a day after a U.S. B-52 bomber flew over South Korea in response to North Korea’s nuclear test last week.

“The United States and South Korea are continuously and closely having discussions on additional deployment of strategic assets,” Kim Min-seok, spokesman at the South Korean defence ministry said on Monday, declining to give specifics.

South Korean media said strategic assets Washington may utilise in Korea included B-2 bombers, nuclear-powered submarines and F-22 stealth fighter jets.

Seoul also said on Monday that it would restrict access to the jointly run Kaesong industrial complex just north of the heavily militarised inter-Korean border to the “minimum necessary level” starting from Tuesday.

North Korea says it exploded a hydrogen bomb last Wednesday, although the United States and outside experts doubt that the North had achieved such a technological advance in its fourth nuclear test. The test angered China, the North’s main ally, which was not given advance notice, and the United States.

In a show of force and support for its allies in the region, the United States on Sunday sent a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber based in Guam on a flight over South Korea.

Separately, South Korea and Japan used their shared military hotline for the first time in the aftermath of North Korea’s nuclear test, Seoul’s defence ministry said, a sign the North’s provocation is pushing the two longtime rivals, which are Washington’s main allies in the region, closer together.

South Korea has also resumed anti-North propaganda broadcasts using loudspeakers along the border, a tactic that the North considers insulting and resulted in an armed standoff that included an exchange of artillery fire the last time South Korea used the speakers in August.

South Korea’s president Park Geun-hye plans to make a speech to the nation on Wednesday in which she is expected to express strong will to respond to North Korea’s nuclear test, a presidential official said.

North Korea’s Rodong Sinmun newspaper, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ Party, said that the United States was bringing the political situation to the brink of war by sending strategic bombers to South Korea.

The chairman of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said on Monday that North Korea was likely to carry out further sudden provocations, a South Korean defence ministry official said.

Lee Sun-jin’s comments were made during a visit with General Curtis Scaparrotti, the commander of U.S. forces in Korea, to the Osan Air Base operated jointly with U.S. and South Korea. (Writing by Tony Munroe; Editing by Michael Perry)</s>South Korea's defense minister on Monday said it was worth reviewing the redeployment of American tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula to guard against the North, a step that analysts warn would sharply increase the risk of an accidental conflict.

As concern over Korea deepened following North Korea's huge nuclear test Sunday, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was "begging for war."

Here in Seoul, the Defense Ministry warned that Pyongyang might be preparing to launch another missile into the Pacific Ocean, perhaps an intercontinental ballistic missile theoretically capable of reaching the mainland United States.

President Donald Trump and his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, spoke on the phone for 40 minutes Monday night, Korean time - some 34 hours after the nuclear test and more than 24 hours after Trump took to Twitter to criticize Moon's "talk of appeasement."

The two agreed to remove the limit on allowed payloads for South Korean missiles - something Seoul had been pushing for - as a way to increase deterrence against North Korea, according to a statement from South Korea's Blue House.

They agreed as well to work together to punish North Korea for Sunday's nuclear test, pledging "to strengthen joint military capabilities," a White House statement said, and to "maximize pressure on North Korea using all means at their disposal."

In a later phone call, Trump and German Chancellor Angela Merkel "reaffirmed" the necessity of coordinating a response at the United Nations.

At a U.N. Security Council meeting, Haley pressed for the "strongest possible" sanctions against the North. The administration plans to circulate a new sanctions draft this week. Haley did not spell out how she would overcome the objections of veto-wielding permanent members China and Russia.

But she cautioned, "War is never something the United States wants. We don't want it now. But our country's patience is not unlimited. We will defend our allies and our territory."

Haley ruled out the "freeze for freeze" proposal backed by China and Russia, which would suspend U.S. joint military exercises with South Korea in return for suspension of North Korean nuclear and missile tests.

"When a rogue regime has a nuclear weapon and an ICBM pointed at you, you do not take steps to lower your guard. No one would do that. We certainly won't," she said.

Instead, she reiterated a White House threat from Sunday to cut off trade with any countries that also trade with North Korea. That would presumably include China, with which the United States had nearly $650 billion worth of trade in goods and services last year.

"The United States will look at every country that does business with North Korea as a country that is giving aid to their reckless and dangerous nuclear intentions," she said.

Her remarks appeared to be unpersuasive. "China will never allow chaos and war" in Korea, said Liu Jieyi, the Chinese ambassador to the United Nations. Sanctions alone will not solve the crisis, said Russia's U.N. ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia.

Earlier Monday, South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that he asked his American counterpart, Jim Mattis, during talks at the Pentagon last week that strategic assets such as U.S. aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and B-52 bombers be sent to South Korea more regularly.

"I told him that it would be good for strategic assets to be sent regularly to the Korean Peninsula and that some South Korean lawmakers and media are strongly pushing for tactical nuclear weapons [to be redeployed]," Song told a parliamentary hearing on North Korea's nuclear test, without disclosing Mattis's response.

A poll that YTN, a cable news channel, commissioned in August found that 68 percent of respondents said they supported bringing tactical nuclear weapons back to South Korea.

"The redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons is an alternative worth a full review," Song said, echoing a position closely associated with conservatives in South Korea but not with progressives like Moon, who was elected president in May after vowing to engage with the North.

The United States had about 100 nuclear-armed weapons, including short-range artillery, stationed in South Korea until 1991. Then President George H.W. Bush signed the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives and withdrew all tactical nuclear weapons that had been deployed abroad.

Shortly afterward, the two Koreas signed an agreement committing to making the peninsula free of nuclear weapons - a deal that North Korea violated by developing its own nuclear arms. But Pyongyang has maintained that Seoul has also broken its promise because remaining under the U.S. nuclear umbrella is tantamount, it says, to having such weapons.

After the defense minister spoke at the hearing, the South Korean president's office said that it was not considering redeploying tactical nuclear weapons. "Our government's firm stance on the nuclear-free peninsula remains unchanged," said Kim Dong-jo, a spokesman for Moon.

Military experts in the United States are almost universally opposed to the idea of deploying strategic or tactical weapons in South Korea.

"The thing that most concerns me about redeployment is that it introduces more room for miscalculation or unintended escalation," said Catherine Dill of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey, California.

In that situation, the ability to react more quickly could be a negative factor.

From the perspective of the military alliance between the United States and South Korea, having long-range ballistic missiles or strategic bombers is "perfectly sufficient" to continue to deter North Korea, Dill said.

As alliance partners, the U.S. and South Korean militaries work in close cooperation, regularly conducting drills together. This includes sending "strategic assets" such as bombers stationed on the Pacific island of Guam over South Korea on a regular basis, and having submarines make port calls during exercises.

As the North Korean threat has increased this year, the United States has sent F-35 stealth aircraft and other strike fighters on flyovers across the southern half of the peninsula in a not-so-thinly veiled warning to Kim. The U.S. Pacific Command even released photos last week of B-1B Lancers dropping bombs on a range on the southern side of the demilitarized zone that separates the two Koreas.

But a growing number of policymakers in Seoul say that Guam is too far away and that, if the South comes under attack from North Korea, it can't wait the two-plus hours it would take American bombers to arrive from their base in the Pacific.</s>South Korea began live-fire drills and asked the United States to deploy aircraft carriers and strategic bombers off the Korean peninsula as North Korea appears to prepare for another missile launch after testing a nuclear device over the weekend, according to a report on Monday.

“We have continued to see signs of possibly more ballistic missile launches. We also forecast North Korea could fire an intercontinental ballistic missile,” Jang Kyoung-soo, acting deputy minister of national defense policy, told a parliament hearing on Monday, Reuters reported.

South Korea wants the US to deploy “strategic assets like aircraft carriers and strategic bombers,” Jang said, the news service reported.
South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo says it is worth reviewing deployment of U.S. strategic assets (aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines, and B-52 bombers) to South Korea more regularly.