Biden Sent Nuclear Subs To South Korea In 2023

In 2023 the U.S. deployed nuclear-armed submarines to South Korea for the first time in decades — part of a new agreement that will signal Washington's commitment to defend Seoul against rising nuclear threats from North Korea, U.S. officials said.

President Yoon, who has now seized dictatorial power, came to Washington, DC and serenaded the distinguished guests with a rendition of the song "American Pie."

The plan to dock the ballistic missile submarines in South Korea, which hasn't happened since the 1980s, headlines an effort to make U.S. deterrence against Kim Jong Un's regime "more visible," senior administration officials said. The U.S. will also vow to give its ally a greater role in any response to a potential nuclear attack.

President Joe Biden and his South Korean counterpart, Yoon Suk Yeol, were to announce the agreement Wednesday in Washington, the officials said.

The Washington Declaration, as it’s known, won’t involve the U.S.’s deploying nuclear weapons to the South, as it did during the Cold War, the officials said. Instead the U.S. will increase the number of military assets it sends to the country on a temporary basis, such as a nuclear-armed submarine and bombers.

The officials likened it to cooperation with European allies in the Cold War during similar periods of threat.

The declaration would also improve joint training, information-sharing and military exercises in “deterring and defending” against the North, an official said.

The announcement is "purely symbolic" and intended "to reassure the South Korean public" that the U.S. still has its back, said Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California. But the commitments "don’t have any military value."

Many South Koreans appear to need reassuring.

Polling shows more and more want their government to develop nuclear weapons of its own, driven by questions over whether a Washington distracted by the growing clash with China would protect them in a conflict with the nuclear-armed North.