Yonhap:
A senior U.S. state department official said Friday that there will be more “defensive” steps than the recent decision to place an advanced missile defense system on the Korean Peninsula if the threat from North Korea persists.
Tony Blinken, U.S. deputy secretary of state, also renewed Washington’s commitment to protecting its allies, while expressing objection to some hawkish South Korean politicians’ demand to arm itself with its own nuclear weapons for fear that it could end up destabilizing the region by sparking an arms race.
“Every single day that goes by, North Korea becomes more and more acute threat to South Korea, Japan, countries in the region and the U.S. And it gets closer to the day when it can actually put a nuclear weapon and an inter-continental ballistic missile that can reach the continental U.S. That’s not acceptable for us.” he said during a lecture at Seoul National University.
“We have been very clear with China and others that we will have to continue to take defensive steps to protect ourselves and protect our allies and partners. And sometimes those kinds of steps we think that China does not like even though they are not directed at China. For example the decision… to deploy the THAAD missile defenses system,” he added.
South Korea and the U.S. announced a plan in July to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system on the peninsula by end-2017. China strongly opposes the decision, saying that it would hurt its strategic security interests.
Seoul and Washington dismiss the concerns, saying that the deployment is solely aimed at missile and other threats coming from the North.
