Seoul says talks underway over joint nuclear exercises

SEOUL — Seoul and Washington are discussing joint planning and exercises involving nuclear assets of the United States to counter alleged growing threats on the Korean Peninsula, the Republic of Korea's presidential office said on Tuesday, after US President Joe Biden said there would be no such joint drills.

The statement was released after Biden said the US was not discussing joint nuclear exercises with the ROK, seemingly contradicting comments by ROK President Yoon Suk-yeol this week.

The two security allies are in talks over information sharing, joint planning and joint implementation plans that "follow with regard to the operation of US nuclear assets to respond to nuclear weapons" of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Yoon's office said in a statement.

In an interview with the Chosun Ilbo newspaper published on Monday, Yoon said the US' existing "nuclear umbrella" and "extended deterrence" were no longer enough to reassure the ROK people.

"The nuclear weapons belong to the United States, but the planning, information sharing, exercises and training must be done jointly by South Korea and the United States," said Yoon, adding that the US was "quite positive" about the idea.

Biden replies 'no'

Hours after that interview was published, Biden gave an emphatic "no" in response to whether the two sides were considering joint nuclear exercises.

Yoon's office acknowledged Biden's response, but said the US president had been "left with no options but to answer 'no' when directly asked ... without any context".

"Joint nuclear exercise is a term only used by nuclear powers," Kim Eun-hye, a spokeswoman for the ROK president's office, said.

The back and forth came after the DPRK's top leader Kim Jong-un called for an "exponential" increase in his country's nuclear arsenal and new intercontinental ballistic missiles to counter what it termed US and ROK hostility.

Last year, the DPRK performed a record number of weapons tests by launching a variety of ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US mainland and its allies the ROK and Japan. In September, the DPRK also adopted a new law authorizing the preemptive use of its military in a broad range of cases, The Associated Press reported.

Under Yoon, the ROK government has beefed up joint military drills with the US, which had been scaled back during the pandemic or suspended for a bout of ill-fated diplomacy with the DPRK under his predecessor.

Kim Tae-woo, former head of the Korea Institute for National Unification, said the reported ROK-US discussion likely "benchmarked a NATO-style nuclear-sharing arrangement" that allows NATO member states' warplanes to carry US nuclear weapons.

He said the discussion still appears to be falling short of the NATO arrangement because possible nuclear exercises between the two countries would likely be ROK Air Force aircraft escorting US aircraft simulating nuclear strikes during joint drills.

"Pyongyang would take this sensitively," he said. "(Seoul and Washington) are discussing this to get Pyongyang to take this sensitively ...because that can be a deterrence."

Agencies via Xinhua