Seoul, Washington are stressing extended deterrence again

Korea's Foreign Minister Park Jin, left and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, right, hold a news conference at the U.S. State Department in Washington on Monday. [REUTERS/YONHAP]

Foreign Minister Park Jin and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken urged North Korea to cease its provocations and abandon any idea of staging a nuclear test, vowing to meet them with a strong response.

“We affirmed that any North Korean provocations, including a nuclear test, will be met with a united and firm response from our alliance and the international community,” Park told the press in a joint briefing with Blinken at the State Department on Monday. “Pyongyang’s continuous provocations will only lead to strengthened deterrence [by] the alliance and stronger international sanctions measures.”

Park met with Blinken at the State Department on Monday. The meeting came on the heels of Pyongyang's launches of 31 ballistic missiles this year, and signs that the regime may be gearing up for its seventh nuclear test.

Blinken, in response to a question about a possible nuclear test, said Washington is “in very close touch with our close allies and partners,” including Korea and Japan, to “respond quickly should the North Koreans proceed with such a test.

“A nuclear test would be dangerous, it would be deeply destabilizing to the region,” Blinken said. “We urge the DPRK to refrain from further destabilizing activity. We call on the DPRK to engage in serious and sustained diplomacy.”

DPRK is the acronym for North Korea’s full name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

Extended deterrence by the U.S., though not spelled out in specifics, was also emphasized by both leaders.

“The United States is committed to extended deterrence, and that commitment will also take the form of, as we’ve discussed, re-establishing the Extended Deterrence Group, the working group, and my expectation, I think the minister’s expectation, is that that will get up and working very, very soon in the weeks ahead,” Blinken said.

U.S.-Korea Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group, or the EDSCG, was established in a U.S.-Korea Foreign and Defense Ministers’ meeting on Oct. 19, 2016. It was intended to serve as a channel for the allies to hold in-depth discussions on strategic and policy issues regarding extended deterrence against North Korea, including how to better leverage the full breadth of the two countries’ power, including diplomacy, information, military and economic capabilities.

The EDSCG has not met since its second meeting in 2018. Political analysts have attributed the group’s dormancy to attempts by the administration of former President Moon Jae-in to engage Pyongyang.

“Extended deterrence strategy and consultation group meeting should be reactivated as soon as possible,” said Park. “And, of course, the restoration of the Korea-U.S. joint military exercise will certainly help bring about [a safer] environment on the Korean Peninsula.”

Joint military exercises were scaled down since 2018 as the Moon administration tried to engage Pyongyang, and were reduced to computer simulations since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

It was the first meeting between Park and Blinken since Park was sworn in as foreign minister last month.

North Korea has been ramping up its provocations since the start of the year, launching the most number of ballistic missiles it has ever launched in a single year, including an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on May 25. Its previous record was 25 missiles in 2019.

Recent satellite images of North Korea's Punggye-ri nuclear testing site, the site for all of its six nuclear tests, suggested the regime is gearing up for a seventh nuclear test.

The last nuclear test by the North was in 2017, after which it adhered to a moratorium on nuclear weapons and ICBM tests for what it called “confidence building” efforts for dialogue with the United States. That détente fell through with the collapse of the 2019 Hanoi summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

BY ESTHER CHUNG [chung.juhee@joongang.co.kr]