He did not elaborate.
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President Park Geun-hye has called for more vigilance against North Korea’s possible provocations in the wake of the North’s January 6 nuclear test and its missile launch.
The rationale was a clear necessity to upgrade the defence posture of the South Korea-US military alliance “against North Korea’s advancing threats”, said Yoo Jeh-Seung, Seoul’s deputy defence minister for policy.
North Korea launched a satellite into space Sunday, its state media reported, triggering a wave of worldwide condemnation and prompting strong reaction from an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council.
“We condemn today’s launch and North Korea’s determination to prioritise its missile and nuclear weapons programs over the well-being of its people, whose struggles only intensify with North Korea’s diversion of scarce resources to such destabilising activities”.
The United States and South Korea announced after the missile test they had begun formal discussions about the possibility of deploying an advanced missile defense system to which China has objected, arguing it could undermine its strategic deterrent.
The South is also prepared to shoot down any rocket or debris that infringes on its territory, the defence ministry said, although security experts believe the country’s Patriot missiles, with an interception range of about 15 kilometres (9 miles), would be ill-equipped for the job.
Sunday’s rocket, carrying an Earth observation satellite, blasted off at around 9:00 am Pyongyang time (0030 GMT) and, according to North Korean state TV, achieved orbit 10 minutes later.
South Korea and the United States said that if THAAD was deployed to South Korea, it would be focused only on North Korea.
US National Security Adviser Susan Rice called the launch a “destabilising and provocative” action.
Russia’s United Nations ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, whose country is also a North Korean ally, said: “It has to be a weighty resolution, but it also has to be a reasonable resolution” that doesn’t lead to North Korea’s economic or humanitarian collapse, or further heighten tensions.
South Korea is on high alert for any signs of additional provocations by the North a day after Pyongyang launched a long range rocket.
“It is time to move forward on this issue”, said Thomas Vandal, commander of the Eighth US Army based in South Korea.
“North Korea’s missile and nuclear weapons programs represent serious threats to our interests, including the security of some of our closest allies, and undermine peace and security in the broader region”, the official twitter statement from the Prime Minister’s Office as quoted by CNN.
Some experts, however, questioned how effective THAAD would be against the type of long-range rocket launched by North Korea and the Pentagon concedes it has yet to be tested against such a device.
“I think that China has been using the THAAD issue to make a rift in the Korea-U.S. alliance”, Yun said.
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“Much of what missile defense programmes are about is reassuring allies and the public”, he said.
