Right of self-defense Apart from trilateral security cooperation, the Yoon government mainly pursues a two-pronged strategy to counter North Korea’s existential nuclear and missile threats. In a nutshell, South Korea aims to enhance the viability of the US extended deterrence and strengthen its independent military capabilities. “We seek to intensively pour our resources, including defense budg...

South Korean and Japanese vice defense ministers will hold a rare in-person meeting this week in Seoul for the first time in six years and discuss long pending issues, including the radar lock-on dispute in 2018, and defense and security cooperation. Japanese Vice Minister of Defense for International Affairs Masami Oka will visit Seoul to participate in the three-day Seoul Defense Dialogue 2022...

South Korea has begun the process of providing full-time, unfettered overland access to a military base that hosts the US-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense anti-ballistic missile system in earnest as of Sunday. The move is part of the South Korean president’s pledge to “normalize” the operation of the THAAD base in Soseong-ri, Seongju County, North Gyeongsang Province, by the end of Augus...

North Korean commanders of paramilitary and reserve forces gathered for a full-scale meeting in Pyongyang for the first time in three years amid the “constant threat of war,” the state media reported Wednesday. The participants pledged to strengthen their combat capabilities for “all-people resistance.” The sixth “Active Leading Personnel of the Worker-Peasant Red Guards” meeting was held at the...

North Korea appears to have temporarily stopped work to reactivate an unused tunnel at the Punggye-ri nuclear testing site, likely due to recent heavy rains, a Washington-based think tank said Monday. Commercial satellite images acquired on Aug. 24 indicated that road construction to Tunnel No. 4 remained suspended at North Korea’s main nuclear testing site in Punggye-ri in Kilju County of North...

South Korea’s Defense Ministry has proposed to raise expenditures on establishing an indigenous three-axis defense system by 9.4 percent amid North Korea’s mounting missile and nuclear threats, but has left a controversial project of locally building a light aircraft carrier out of the spending bill. The overall defense budget for 2023 approved by the Cabinet on Tuesday morning set a 4.6 percent...

Member states of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT, are seeking to adopt a final declaration that urges North Korea to promptly take “concrete measures” to abandon its missile and nuclear programs and denies its self-claimed status as a nuclear weapon state. The draft of a final statement on the 10th NPT review conference, which kicked off Aug. 1 and continues until F...

South Korea and the United States “entirely” align on their plans to achieve North Korea’s denuclearization in stages, the US State Department said Monday, urging North Korea to affirmatively respond to South Korea’s “audacious initiative.” The US State Department on Monday reiterated its endorsement of the Yoon Suk-yeol government’s “audacious initiative,” which seeks to achieve North Korea’s d...

Real-world scenarios Yoon emphasized that South Korea should be prepared for real-life scenarios such as “cyberattacks on national key information and communication technologies facilities.” Other scenarios include attacks on “core industrial infrastructure such as ports, airports and nuclear power plants, high-tech industrial facilities including semiconductors and major raw material supply ch...

North Korea’s propaganda outlets denounced South Korea’s diplomatic initiative to mend ties with Japan in articles issued this weekend, claiming the Yoon Suk-yeol government is seeking to capitalize on the death of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. The North Korean external-oriented outlets made mention of Abe’s death for the first time, more than six weeks after Abe was shot to death i...

South Korea and the United States agreed to develop cybersecurity cooperation through steps including regular cyber defense exercises, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Thursday. South Korea’s Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup met Gen. Paul Nakasone, commander of US Cyber Command and director of the National Security Agency, on Thursday in Seoul. Both sides discussed recent cyber threats, counter...

South Korea’s Air Force will join an Australia-led large-scale multilateral air combat exercise for the first time to enhance interoperability and military cooperation with participating Indo-Pacific countries and key NATO members. South Korea’s fighter jets departed Jungwon Air Base in North Chungcheong Province on Thursday for Base Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia to take part in ...

South Korea and the United States committed to enhancing military and security cooperation to deal with challenges in the Indo-Pacific region at the high-level defense talks, reaffirming the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Taiwan Strait. South Korea’s Defense Ministry and the US Defense Department held the 21st Korea-US Integrated Defense Dialogue (KIDD) on Tuesday and Wedne...

North Korea-affiliated hacking groups stole around $1 billion worth of cryptocurrency just from decentralized-finance protocols in the first seven months of this year, a US blockchain analysis firm said Tuesday. Cryptocurrency theft by North Korean hackers accounted for more than 50 percent of the total losses arising from cryptocurrency hacks, according to an online report released by blockchai...

North Korea fired two suspected cruise missiles from South Pyongan Province toward the western sea on Wednesday early morning as South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol marked his 100th day in office. “North Korea is presumed to have launched two cruise missiles near Onchon County, South Pyongan Province early this morning,” a South Korean military official told reporters on condition of anonymity,...