Top security advisers of South Korea and the United States agreed Friday to discuss in advance any steps they could take to contain provocative North Korea, Seoul's presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said, apparently suggesting the US will not pre-emptively strike the communist North without informing Seoul beforehand.
The agreement came at a telephone conversation between Chung Eui-yong, the head of South Korea's Presidential National Security Office, and his US counterpart H.R. McMaster.
The two "discussed current security conditions surrounding the Korean Peninsula caused by North Korean provocations and heightened tension, and ways to deal with such threats," Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Soo-hyun told a press briefing.
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Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Soo-hyun (Yonhap) |
"The two sides reaffirmed their promise to closely and transparently cooperate on the steps to be taken in each stage to help ensure the security and safety of both South Korea, the United States and their people."
The telephone conversation started at 8 a.m. (Seoul time) and lasted 40 minutes.
Rejecting the new US-proposed sanctions resolution adopted earlier this week by the UN Security Council, Pyongyang said it would consider a plan for a missile strike around the US-controlled island of Guam, home to several US military units.
US President Donald Trump spoke of "fire and fury" from the very onset.
On Thursday (US time), he refused to rule out the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against the communist state, only saying, "We don't talk about that.
"If North Korea does anything in terms of even thinking about attack of anybody that we love or we represent or our allies or us, they can be very, very nervous," he said. "Because things will happen to them like they never thought possible."
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