South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called yesterday for beefing up the country's military and strengthening ties with the US to deter any aggression from North Korea.
"Strengthening defense capability and becoming a strong army means we should win a war in the event it breaks out," Lee told top military leaders at an army headquarters south of Seoul, South Korean pool reports said.
"Our greater role is to prevent a war," he said.
Lee, a conservative who has pledged to take a tougher line on the North's nuclear threat, also said the South Korea-US alliance is "very important" to deter aggression from Pyongyang.
He expressed pride that the Seoul area has developed into a world-class metropolis "despite facing the North's military -- one of the world's strongest -- only 40 miles [60km] away."
Under the government of Lee's liberal predecessor -- former president Roh Moo-hyun -- South Korea agreed to retake wartime operational control of its 680,000-member military from the US by 2012.
The US also plans to reduce its troops level in South Korea to 25,000 by December from the current 28,500 under a global troop realignment program.
The US troop-reduction plans stoked security jitters among many South Koreans who argue that a nuclear-armed North Korea still poses a formidable treat to South Korea. The US says the introduction of sophisticated weapons would offset the reduced boots on the ground.
Regaining military wartime command was key to Roh's drive to seek an equal footing in relations with the US, which took full operational control of the South Korean military shortly after the Korean War broke out in 1950. South Korea took back the peacetime control in 1994 but the wartime operational control still lies in the hands of the chief of US troops here.
Under Roh's government, South Korea's ties with the US also underwent tense moments mainly because of Roh's engagement policy with the North.
Lee, who took office last month, has said he will restore frayed ties with Washington. His aides have indicated they will seek to delay the schedule for the wartime control transfer.
During Roh's tenure, South Korea also began downsizing its military troop levels.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in