South Korea's Defense Minister Song Young-moo (R) meets Adm. Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, in Seoul on Tuesday. Photo by Yonhap
Sept. 5 (UPI) -- The commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and South Korea's defense minister said they agreed to prepare a "practical military response plan" to what Adm. Scott Swift described as Pyongyang's "self-destructive" acts, following the country's sixth nuclear test.
Swift, who oversees 200 ships and submarines, 1,180 aircraft and more than 140,000 sailors, also said the U.S. Navy plans to deploy strategic assets, including a carrier strike group, to the peninsula, Yonhap reported.
Defense Minister Song Young-moo welcomed the proposal, and requested the Pacific Fleet commander play a pivotal role for peace and stability on the Korean peninsula, according to the report.
"If there's a desire to have another carrier and there's a desire to have more ships, more submarines, we have the capability and capacity to support that direction," Swift said.
The U.S. naval commander described the U.S.-South Korea alliance as "ironclad" and told reporters in Seoul that North Korea's provocations will not weaken bilateral ties.
"If [Kim Jong Un] is trying to separate the alliances and the allegiances that we have in the region, it's having the opposite [effect]," Swift said.
Concern had been rising in South Korea after U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted a criticism of South Korea's North Korea policy, calling the approach "appeasement."
"South Korea is finding, as I have told them, that their talk of appeasement with North Korea will not work, they only understand one thing!" Trump tweeted Sunday.
Trump later tweeted he is "allowing Japan & South Korea to buy a substantially increased amount of highly sophisticated military equipment from the United States," a day after the White House said the president had approved the purchase of "many billions of dollars' worth of military weapons and equipment from the United States by South Korea."
On Tuesday, Swift dismissed reports of a U.S.-South Korea rift, calling any relationship between two countries "multidimensional."
Song and Swift said North Korea's nuclear test was an "unacceptable provocation" that poses a grave threat to peace and security in the Asia Pacific as well as the world.
The provocation also further isolates North Korea and places more hardship on ordinary North Koreans, they said.
