U.S. and South Korea in talks for more strategic assets to Korean peninsula

The United States and its ally South Korea are in talks towards sending further strategic assets to the Korean peninsula, South Korea’s defence ministry said, a day after a U.S. B-52 bomber flew over South Korea in response to North Korea’s nuclear test last week.

“The United States and South Korea are continuously and closely having discussions on additional deployment of strategic assets on the Korean peninsula,” Kim Min-seok, spokesman at the South Korean defence ministry, said on Monday (January 11).

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un maintained that Wednesday’s test was of a hydrogen bomb and said it was a self-defensive step against a U.S. threat of nuclear war.

North Korea’s fourth nuclear test angered both China, its main ally, and the United States, although the U.S. government and weapons experts doubt the North’s claim that the device was a hydrogen bomb. (Reuters)