AN US aircraft carrier and warships from its strike group arrived in South Korea on Friday for the first time in nearly five years to participate in joint war games in a show of force at North Korea.
The nuclear-powered USS Ronald Reagan and vessels from its strike group docked in the southern port city of Busan as part of a hostile push by Washington and Seoul to intimidate Pyongyang.
A South Korean defence ministry official said: ‘The deployment of the carrier USS Ronald Reagan to Busan demonstrates the strength of the South Korea-US alliance.’
The visit aims to ‘deter North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats,’ the official asserted.
The US Navy said that the aircraft carrier was accompanied by two other warships from its strike group – the USS Chancellorsville, a guided-missile cruiser, and the USS Barry, a guided missile destroyer.
They will take part in joint war games on South Korea’s east coast this month.
The nuclear-powered submarine USS Annapolis is also expected to take part in the military manoeuvres.
The drills come as South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol, who took office in May, has vowed to further escalate joint military exercises with the US amid heightened tensions with North Korea.
Washington remains Seoul’s key military ally and has deployed nearly 28,500 troops in the country as part of measures to ‘protect’ it from the North.
The two countries staged joint military manoeuvres last month, marking the resumption of large-scale war games that had been halted due to Covid-19 and what they describe as ‘failed diplomacy’ with Pyongyang.
North Korea, meanwhile, has conducted a series of weapons tests this year.
It revised its nuclear law earlier this month, enshrining a ‘first strike’ doctrine and vowing not to give up its nuclear weapons in the face of threats from massive military drills near its waters by the US and South Korea.
The North Koreans have tested nuclear weapons six times since 2006. Its last and most powerful test came in 2017 – which was described as a hydrogen bomb – with an estimated yield of 250 kilotons.
Earlier this month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said that his country would never surrender its nuclear arsenal or use it as a bargaining chip for denuclearisation with the US.
Kim described it as a move to bolster the country’s nuclear status and make clear that such weapons will not be bargained for, accusing the US of pushing hard to weaken the North’s defences.
Kim said: ‘(We will) never give up nuclear weapons and there is absolutely no denuclearisation, and no negotiation and no bargaining chip to trade in the process.’
He lashed out at the US for pressuring his country through sanctions to give up its nuclear weapons, calling it a ‘misjudgment and miscalculation’ that won’t materialise even in a ‘hundred years’.
Tensions between the two neighbours have heightened in recent years, fuelled by South Korea’s growing alliance with the US and Washington’s sanctions against Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol was caught on a microphone insulting American Congress men and women as ‘idiots’ for failing to pass the additional $6 billion (£5.3 billion) in aid to the United Nations Global Fund.
He was overheard after his brief meeting with US President Joe Biden at the Global Fund in New York.
In the footage which was posted on the internet Yoon can be clearly seen walking along the stage after chatting with Biden before turning to his aides and speaking it is believed he was unaware that any of the microphone was capable of picking up what he was saying.
In a video that was broadcast on South Korean television Yoon was shown telling Foreign Minster Park Jin about Biden’s drive to increase the US contribution to Global Fund, which would require congressional approval.
Yoon said: ‘What an embarrassment for Biden, if these idiots refuse to grant it in Congress.’
At the conference, Biden had pledged $6 billion from the US to be funded after the approval by Congress, for the public health campaign to fight AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria worldwide.
However, the presidential office of South Korea denied that the remarks were targeted at the US, and his spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said he was misheard for a similar-sounding Korean word and he was referring to South Korea’s parliament instead of the US.
Park Hong-geun, the South Korean opposition leader, did not accept the justification as he criticised Yoon for hampering the US-South Korean ties.
He called it ‘an ill-founded excuse’ by the presidential office trying to cover up a ‘diplomatic disaster’.
The opposition Democratic Party MP Chun Jae-soo said that Yoon’s official denial was akin to telling South Koreans they were ‘hearing impaired’.
With around 27,000 of its troops stationed in South Korea, the US is South Korea’s key security ally.
The conference came as the US signed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that will eliminate consumer tax credits for South Korean automakers without operational electric vehicle plants in the United States.
The IRA is stated to have caused an unexpected discord in relations between the two allies because of the new rules on subsidies for EVs from the Biden administration’s side.
South Korea is seeing the new act as a violation of trade rules.
Yoon’s office said in a statement: ‘President Yoon asked for close cooperation so that the US administration can resolve our concerns in the process of enforcing the Inflation Reduction Act.’
- Elsewhere, nearly 50 Republicans in the US Congress have renewed an effort to stop President Joe Biden’s administration from returning to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and removal of sanctions against Tehran.
Senator Joni Ernst and Congressman Mike Waltz, along with 25 Senate Republican and 20 House Republican co-sponsors introduced an act, which would prevent the withdrawal of US sanctions on Iran until Secretary of State Antony Blinken certifies to Congress that Iran had not supported any attempts to target US citizens or Iranians living in the country for at least five years.
Ernst said in a statement that ‘President Biden should not provide a dime of sanctions relief’ to Iran, alleging that the Biden administration continues to cozy up to the Islamic Republic in hopes of a nuclear deal.
The new bill is the latest congressional effort to prevent a return to the nuclear deal.
Earlier this month, a bipartisan group of 50 House lawmakers sent a letter to Biden, expressing opposition to Washington’s return to the Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).
The lawmakers, 34 Democrats and 16 Republicans, referred to several points they believed should sway Washington against the agreement, and urging the Biden administration to provide Congress with the full text of any potential deal.
The letter, written by Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer and some of his colleagues read: ‘We urge you not to return to any deal with Iran prior to releasing the full text of the agreement and any side agreements to Congress, to provide us with an in-depth briefing on the matter, and to consult with all key stakeholders.’
The United States, under former president Donald Trump, abandoned the Iran deal in May 2018 and reinstated unilateral sanctions that the agreement had lifted.
The talks to salvage the agreement kicked off in the Austrian capital city of Vienna in April last year, months after Biden succeeded Trump, with the intention of examining Washington’s seriousness in rejoining the deal and removing anti-Iran sanctions.
Despite notable progress, the US indecisiveness and procrastination caused multiple interruptions in the marathon talks.
