South Korea will consider redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons on its territory in consultation with Washington, the country's defense chief said Monday following reports of North Korea's uranium enrichment.
Asked by a lawmaker if the government is willing to consider reintroducing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons, Defense Minister Kim Tae-young
told a parliament committee that the government "will review what you said."
Kim said such an option could be discussed when South Korea and the U.S. hold their first meeting of the Extended Deterrence Policy Committee next month. During their annual meeting in October, Kim and U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates agreed to form the joint military committee to enhance deterrence against North Korea's nuclear programs.
Kim made the remarks amid fresh fears over North Korea's nuclear ambitions after the revelation by Pyongyang to a visiting U.S. scientist that it was operating a new uranium enrichment plant with 2,000 centrifuges installed and running.
In a report posted over the weekend, Siegfried Hecker of Stanford University said he had been allowed to visit the new plant this month at the
North's Yongbyon nuclear complex, buttressing the prospect that North Korea might be preparing to make a more powerful atomic bomb with a simpler method than reprocessing plutonium.
South Korea and the U.S. have shared "grave concerns" over the North's claim of having a facility for uranium enrichment, Kim said, adding the two allies will "thoroughly prepare" their countermeasures.
"However, we are not surprised by (the North's revelation of the uranium enrichment facility) because we have shared intelligence with the U.S.," Kim told lawmakers. "We are working to figure more out," he said.
The U.S. announced in 1991 that it withdrew all of its tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea under Washington's disarmament initiative.
The nuclear weapons, deployed at 16 military installations here five years after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, were designed to be put atop missiles or artillery warheads as a deterrent against North Korea.
About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean War.