SOUTH KOREA wants to strike a controversial agreement with the US that will allow Seoul to extend the range of its ballistic missiles to counter the threat of a nuclear-armed North Korea.
President Lee Myung-bak said yesterday it was no longer acceptable that South Korea limited its missiles to a range of 300km while North Korea was poised to test a rocket next month with a range estimated at more than 3,000km. Seoul restricts its firepower under a 2001 memorandum of understanding with Washington.
“The 300km [range] was set many years ago on the assumption fighting would happen around the demilitarised zone,” Mr Lee said, referring to the armistice line drawn up after the end of the Korean war in 1953. South Korea now faced “new needs in its defence environment”, he added.
Mr Lee has seized on the issue just days before the visit of US president Barack Obama to Seoul for a nuclear security summit. Mr Obama is due to visit the demilitarised zone shortly before the summit starts in what the White House has called a strong show of support for South Korea.
While Seoul has long issued contradictory statements over the 300km restriction, Mr Lee’s unusually direct remarks indicate official policy will now be to push to overturn it.
Seoul will also place Washington in an uncomfortable position as it seeks to avoid a regional arms race by insisting that South Korea is protected under its nuclear umbrella. Despite Mr Lee’s optimism, a senior South Korean security official said US diplomats still remained cautious about agreeing an expansion of South Korean capabilities.
Jonathan Pollack, an Asia expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington, said it was unlikely South Korea had received any encouragement from the US over this proposal. “It is my understanding that the US believes this will make more complicated what is already a complicated situation,” he said. China would also be likely to see the proposal as something that would further threaten stability on the Korean peninsula.
Washington is also struggling to cope with North Korea under its new leader, Kim Jong-un, after Pyongyang appeared to break the spirit of a food aid deal agreed last month by announcing a long-range rocket launch.
Mr Lee said South Korea was continually talking to the US about strategy on the peninsula, where the US bases 30,000 troops, and would use the forthcoming talks to make its missile capabilities more “realistic”.
Mr Lee, a close ally of Mr Obama, said he felt Washington was sympathetic to Seoul’s changing needs and argued a new consensus would emerge. He declined to specify when he might clinch the deal or what improved missile range Seoul might pursue.
South Korea has so far struggled to develop rockets to rival the North’s, and its space programme has been an expensive disappointment. At present, it would rely on its F15 and F16 fighters to strike targets deep in the North.
For several years, debate about missile range capability has been used for domestic propaganda in South Korea. Conservative parliamentarians often demand an end to the 300km limit, while defence officials brief newspapers that Seoul will raise the subject with US officials. However, South Korean security officials then deny Seoul can opt out of the restrictions.
– (Financial Times Service)