A top Pentagon official yesterday praised South Korea as a model ally ready to take greater responsibility for its own security after a new US defense strategy signaled a reduction in US military support to deter North Korea from aggression.
After arriving in Seoul yesterday, US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby held talks with South Korea’s foreign and defense ministers that he said were about advancing an alliance forged in the wake of the Korean War of the 1950s.
“The ROK is a model ally that has committed to meet the global standard of spending 3.5% of GDP on defense and take greater responsibility for its own defense in the context of our alliance,” Colby wrote on X, using the acronym for South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.
Photo: EPA
South Korean Minister of National Defense Ahn Gyu-back stressed during his meeting with Colby the importance of combined readiness posture to maintain peace and stability on the peninsula, Ahn’s office said.
South Korean Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun emphasized the need for continued close communication and cooperation with the US during an earlier meeting with Colby, his ministry said.
Colby’s visit comes after the US National Defense Strategy, released on Friday, urged South Korea to take the primary role in deterring North Korea as US President Donald Trump’s administration shifts focus to prioritize protecting the US homeland. Colby has a leading role in writing the strategy.
“South Korea is capable of taking primary responsibility for deterring North Korea with critical but more limited US support,” the document said. “This shift in the balance of responsibility is consistent with America’s interest in updating US force posture on the Korean Peninsula.”
Details of how the US might change its force posture are not yet clear. The Pentagon is expected to release an assessment soon of where and how the US stations its military forces around the world, known as the Global Posture Review.
South Korea has said it would raise annual defense spending to 3.5 percent of GDP from 2.3 percent “as soon as possible.”
South Korea also sealed an agreement late last year with the US to build nuclear-powered submarines for the South Korean navy, although the details of the plan have yet to be worked out.
In his meeting with Colby, Cho said that cooperation on nuclear-powered submarines would boost Seoul’s deterrence capabilities and contribute to the alliance, a ministry statement said.
A signaling system malfunction disrupted high-speed rail (HSR) services beginning at 8am today, with trains temporarily reduced to three northbound and three southbound trains per hour as authorities conduct inspections. The malfunction occurred on a section of track in Miaoli County during pre-operation checks early this morning, forcing northbound and southbound trains to use a single track, the HSR operator said. The regular schedule has been replaced with three hourly trains offering only nonreserved seating in each direction, stopping at every station, it said, adding that business class cars would still have reserved seating. Departures from terminal stations are scheduled at the top
Taiwan is still in the process of assessing the possibility of recruiting workers from Eswatini, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, adding that its goal is to help Eswatini upgrade its vocational training centers. If there are plans to recruit workers from Eswatini, safeguarding national security, protecting public health and ensuring the employment rights of Taiwanese would be prerequisites, Department of West Asian and African Affairs Director-General Yen Chia-liang (顏嘉良) told a news conference. Key considerations would also include filling labor shortages in specific industries, and fostering bilateral professional and technical exchanges, he said. Yen was asked about the progress of labor
A US uncrewed surface vessel (USV) encountered multiple Chinese warships during an autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait, US defense company Seasats said in a statement on Wednesday. Seasats announced that a Lightfish USV had completed the first autonomous transit of the Taiwan Strait. Over five days, the USV traversed the entire length of the Strait while constantly monitoring surface vessel traffic, the company said. The Lightfish encountered multiple Chinese warships, one of which was a Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) Type 056 corvette, it said. The Chinese vessels were operating “well within Taiwan’s exclusive economic zone without transmitting their identity via the
VERBOSE VESSELS: A CGA cutter and a China Coast Guard exchanged verbal barbs for more than a day in Taiwanese-controlled waters before the Chinese vessel left The Taiwanese and Chinese coast guards had a standoff near the strategically located Pratas Islands (Dongsha Islands, 東沙群島) in the north of the South China Sea, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The two sides engaged in intense radio exchanges over sovereignty claims during the 33-hour standoff. China Coast Guard vessel 3501 eventually left the restricted waters, 26.6 nautical miles (49.2km) west of the Pratas Islands, at 5pm yesterday, the CGA said. Lying approximately between southern Taiwan and Hong Kong, the Taiwan-controlled Pratas are seen by some security experts as vulnerable to Chinese attack due to their distance — more than
RSS