Nuclear-armed US submarine makes first port call in South Korea in four decades

For the first time in decades, a nuclear-armed US Navy ballistic missile submarine has made a port call in South Korea, in a move that comes just days after North Korea test-fired what it said was a solid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile.

The presence of the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine in the South Korean port city of Busan was announced by the country’s Defense Ministry on July 18, CNN reports.

It came as Kurt Campbell, coordinator for the Indo-Pacific at the US National Security Council, was at the inaugural meeting in Seoul of the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG).

The NCG is a joint US and South Korean panel set up by the countries’ leaders at a summit in Washington in April.

Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and a senior official in her own right, said in a statement Monday that the deployment of a US ballistic missile submarine to the peninsula would damage already fractured lines of communication between the two sides.

“The reality before the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) is not dialogue repeatedly touted by the US,” said Kim. Instead, she said, the NCG was “openly discussing the use of nukes against the DPRK and the entry of US strategic nuclear submarine into waters of the Korean Peninsula for the first time in 40-odd years.”

“The US should know that its bolstered extended deterrence system and excessively extended military alliance system, a threatening entity, will only make the DPRK go farther away from the negotiating table desired by it,” the statement added.

The port call came out of an agreement between US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol when they met in the US capital in April. The “Washington Declaration” included a set of measures aimed at making Pyongyang think twice about launching an attack on its southern neighbor.

“Our mutual defense treaty is iron clad and that includes our commitment to extend a deterrence – and that includes the nuclear threat, the nuclear deterrent,” Biden said at the time.

The establishment of the NCG came out of that Biden-Yoon meeting.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the two allies said the NCG would enhance “combined deterrence and response posture.”

“As a result, the collective strength of our two nations will directly contribute to the continued peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and across the Indo-Pacific region,” the statement read.