{"id":270512,"date":"2025-11-04T08:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-04T08:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/270512\/"},"modified":"2025-11-04T08:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-04T08:20:08","slug":"hegseth-praises-south-koreas-plans-to-boost-defense-capabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/270512\/","title":{"rendered":"Hegseth praises South Korea’s plans to boost defense capabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> praised South Korea’s plans to raise its military spending, saying Tuesday that the Asian ally will take a larger role in defending itself from North Korean aggressions<\/a> as the allies must brace for regional contingencies. <\/p>\n

Modernizing the decades-long alliance<\/a> between the U.S. and South Korea is a key issue between the U.S. and South Korea, as the U.S. apparently wants South Korea to increase its conventional defense capabilities so that Washington can focus more on China. <\/p>\n

After annual security talks with South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back<\/a> in Seoul, Hegseth told reporters that he was \u201cgreatly encouraged” by Seoul’s commitment to increase defense spending and make greater investments in South Korean capabilities. He said the two agreed the investments would bolster South Korea’s ability to lead its conventional deterrence and defense against North Korea.<\/p>\n

In a speech at parliament earlier Tuesday, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung<\/a> asked lawmakers to approve an 8.2% increase in defense spending next year, which he said would help modernize the South Korean military’s weapons systems and reduce its reliance on the United States.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe face, as we both acknowledge, a dangerous security environment but our alliance is stronger than ever, “Hegseth said. <\/p>\n

Hegseth said that he and Ahn agreed to demonstrate works to maintain and repair U.S. warships in South Korea, a move that he said will harness South Korea’s world-class shipbuilding capabilities and also \u201censure our most lethal capabilities remain ready to respond to any crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hegseth said the South Korea-U.S. alliance is primarily aimed at coping with potential North Korean provocations<\/a> but must also keep other regional threats in view. <\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no doubt flexibility for regional contingencies is something we would take a look at but we are focused on standing by our allies here and ensuring the threat of the DPRK is not a threat to the Republic of Korea and certainly continue to extend nuclear deterrence as we have before,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

DPRK stands for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea \u2014 North Korea’s official name \u2014 while Republic of Korea is South Korea’s formal name.<\/p>\n

In recent years, the U.S. and South Korea have been discussing how to integrate U.S. nuclear weapons and South Korean conventional weapons in various contingencies. South Korea has no nuclear weapons and is under the U.S. \u201cnuclear umbrella\u201d security commitment. <\/p>\n

Ahn denied speculation that South Korea could eventually seek its own nuclear weapons<\/a> program or is pushing for redeployment of U.S. tactical weapon weapons that were removed from South Korea in the 1990s. He stressed that Seoul remains committed to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause we cannot have nuclear weapons, that\u2019s why a system integrating U.S. nuclear capabilities and South Korea\u2019s conventional weapons, the CNI (conventional-nuclear integration)<\/a> framework, has been established,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hegseth and Ahn did not issue a joint statement after the meeting, leaving the details of their agreements unclear. It’s unusual for the two countries’ defense ministerial talks to end without an immediate joint statement. But Hegseth said there was \u201cno daylight or differences\u201d between the two countries, only \u201ca bigger deal which takes a little more time.\u201d<\/p>\n

North Korea didn\u2019t immediately comment on the Hegseth-Ahn meeting.<\/p>\n

South Korea\u2019s Joint Chiefs of Staff said earlier on Tuesday that it detected the North test-firing around 10 rounds of artillery toward its western seas Monday afternoon, shortly before Hegseth arrived at an inter-Korean border village<\/a> with Ahn to kick off his two-day visit to South Korea.<\/p>\n

The joint chiefs said the North also fired the same number of rounds Saturday afternoon, before a summit between Lee and Chinese President Xi Jinping, where Lee called for a stronger role by Beijing<\/a> to persuade the North to return to dialogue with Washington and Seoul. <\/p>\n

North Korea had expressed irritation over the agenda of the Lee-Xi meeting, ridiculing Seoul for clinging to a \u201cpipe dream\u201d that the North would one day give up its nuclear weapons. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, South Korea — U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praised South Korea’s plans to raise its military spending,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270513,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[144846,23,966,793,1576,3,1577,111,21,19,22,20,25,24,800,965],"class_list":["post-270512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-144846","tag-america","tag-article","tag-general-news","tag-military-and-defense","tag-news","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-politics","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270512"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270512\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}