The Korea Times:
By Jun Ji-hye
The military said it will speed up the development of technologies for the Kill Chain and Korean Air and Missile Defense (KAMD) systems.
The Kill Chain is a system designed to carry out a preemptive strike against Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile facilities if Seoul is faced with an imminent threat, while the KAMD is a low-tier air defense program.
The Ministry of National Defense plans to put them into service in the early 2020s.
The Kim Jong-un regime vowed to continue its nuclear program by declaring itself to be a nuclear state during the seventh congress of the ruling Workers’ Party that kicked off Friday.
“As far as the North declared parallel pursuit of nuclear and economic development as its permanent policy direction, we expect the North to continue to carry out additional nuclear tests and test-fire ballistic missiles in a bid to make its nuclear and missile capabilities near perfect,” said ministry spokesman, Moon Sang-gyun.
The ministry said, among other issues, 13 kinds of weapons, including the Global Hawk unmanned aerial aircraft, the Taurus long-range air-to-ground missile and the Patriot Advanced Capability 3 missile interceptors, which are core assets forming the Kill Chain and the KAMD, will be put into service in 2021.
Some 7.9 trillion won will be invested to achieve these objectives, the ministry said.
The Kill Chain and the KAMD also form part of Seoul and Washington’s 4D Operational Concept that seeks to detect, disrupt, destroy and defend against potential nuclear and missile attacks from the North.
“South Korea and the U.S. will draw up the details of the 4D Operational Concept during the Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue (KIDD) meeting in Washington, D.C.,” a government official said on the condition of anonymity, referring to the two daylong bilateral talks scheduled to open in Washington later in the day.
During the ongoing historic congress that took place 36 years after the previous event was held in 1980 under the rule of Kim Il-sung, the current leader, Kim Jong-un, said, “As a responsible nuclear weapons state, our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nuclear weapons,” according to the regime’s state-run the Korean Central News Agency.
The government construed the remark as reconfirming the North’s unwillingness to abandon its nuclear ambition and maintaining its existing demand that the world accept the North as a nuclear power state.
But Moon made it clear that the consistent position of South Korea as well as within the international community is that the North is not accepted as a nuclear state.
“The government will keep giving efforts to make the North give up its nuclear program through harsher sanctions and pressure on Pyongyang,” Moon said.
Referring to the North’s offer to hold South-North military talks to ease tension along the border on the Korean Peninsula, Moon said that the door to dialogue is always open, but the North should first stop taking provocative action and show its sincere willingness to abandon the nuclear ambitions.
“The North’s offer carries no sincerity as the regime is still pushing ahead with nuclear and missile provocations,” he said.
For their part, South Korea’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Lee Sun-jin and the U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Vincent Brooks will visit the Joint Security Area (JSA) in the truce village of Panmunjeom, Thursday, as part of allies’ efforts to increase pressure on the North.
