US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman met with her counterparts from South Korea and Japan yesterday, emphasizing the US’ commitment to defend its allies and trilateral security cooperation to confront an accelerating nuclear threat from North Korea.
The latest top-level meetings between the countries came as North Korea apparently presses ahead with preparations for its first nuclear test explosion in nearly five years, which US officials say could occur in the next few days.
After a meeting in Seoul, Sherman, South Korean Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun-dong and Japanese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Takeo Mori issued a joint statement condemning North Korea’s “provocative” streak in weapons demonstrations this year and pledging closer security cooperation to curb the growing threats.
Photo: AFP
The statement said Sherman reaffirmed “steadfast” US commitments to the defense of South Korea and Japan, including “extended deterrence,” referring to an assurance to defend its allies with its full military capabilities.
“The United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan are fully and closely aligned on the DPRK,” Sherman said in a news conference, using the initials of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Sherman said that North Korea since September last year has significantly increased the pace and scale of its ballistic launches, posing a “serious threat” to security in the region and beyond, and urged Pyongyang to cease taking “these provocative and destabilizing actions, and to commit to the path of diplomacy.”
Jolting an old pattern of brinkmanship, North Korea has already set an annual record in ballistic launches through the first six months of this year, firing 31 missiles over 18 test events, including its first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) since 2017.
The unusually fast pace in testing activity underscores North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s dual intent to advance his arsenal and pressure the administration of US President Joe Biden over long-stalled negotiations aimed at leveraging its nuclear arsenal for economic and security concessions, experts have said.
Sherman’s visit to Asia came after North Korea in its biggest-ever single-day testing event launched eight ballistic missiles into the sea from multiple locations on Sunday, prompting the US and its Asian allies to respond with missile launches and aerial demonstrations involving dozens of fighter jets.
A nuclear test would further escalate North Korea’s pressure campaign and could possibly allow the country to claim it acquired the technologies to build a bomb small enough to be clustered on a multi-warhead ICBM or on Kim’s broad range of shorter-range weapons threatening South Korea and Japan.
South Korean and US officials have said that the North has all but finished preparations for a detonation at its nuclear testing ground in the remote northeastern town of Punggye-ri, an assessment backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which says there are indications that one of the site’s passages has been reopened.
The site had been inactive since hosting the country’s sixth nuclear test in September 2017, when it claimed it detonated a thermonuclear bomb designed for its ICBMs.
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