South Korea, US defence chiefs reaffirm commitment to defend against North Korea

The respective chiefs of defence for South Korea and the United States on Friday asserted their commitment to protecting South Korea against North Korea. According to South's Defence Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo, this will also include efforts to continue denuclearisation of North Korea.

Jeong and the US Defence Secretary Mark Esper believe in a fair and mutually agreeable cost-sharing pact for American troops that are stationed in South Korea. 

Mark Esper made it clear that South Korea had to bear more burden of the cost for retaining US troops in the country,

''South Korea is a wealthy country and could and should pay more for the deployment of US military in the South'', Esper told a briefing after meeting South Korean Defence Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo.

North Korea has long protested joint military drills, which it condemns as preparations for invasion, and has set Washington an end-of-year deadline to come up with a new offer in deadlocked negotiations on its weapons programmes.

The US and South Korea last year cancelled several joint drills in the wake of the Singapore summit between President Donald Trump and the North's leader Kim Jong Un, but are due to carry out a combined air exercise later this month.

"We will adjust our exercise posture either more or less depending on what diplomacy may require," Esper told reporters on board his plane to Seoul, where he started an Asian tour Thursday.

The possible downsizing of the joint drills should not be seen as a "concession" to Pyongyang, he said, "but as a means to keep the door open to diplomacy".

"I'm all for diplomacy first," he added.

His comments came after Pyongyang reiterated its demands for the combined exercise to be scrapped.

"The US is not accepting with due consideration the year-end time limit that we set out of great patience and magnanimity," a spokesman for the State Affairs Commission (SAC) said in a statement carried by the official KCNA news agency.

The SAC is the North's top governing body and it is unusual for it to issue such declarations.

Holding the drills would be an "undisguised breach" of the Singapore summit declaration, it said, adding: "Betrayal is only what we feel from the US side."

"We no longer feel the need to exercise any more patience," it went on, but gave no details of the "new way" it was threatening to pursue if Washington did not meet its demands.

Negotiations have been gridlocked since the Hanoi summit between Kim and Trump broke up in February with disagreement over sanctions relief and what the North would be willing to give up in return.

Working-level talks restarted in Sweden in October only to break down quickly, with the North blaming the US for not giving up its "old attitude".

Pyongyang has carried out a series of missile tests in recent weeks and months, including one launched at sea, which it said was fired from a submarine -- a potential strategic game-changer.

The tests would improve the North's capabilities, Esper acknowledged.

"Anytime you test, you learn something," he said. "We take them very seriously and we watch them very closely, but we're also not going to overreact and do something that, for example, could close the door to diplomacy."

North Korea's roving ambassador for the foreign ministry said Thursday that Pyongyang was not interested in US talks without concessions from Washington.

"I intuitively feel that the US is not ready to give a satisfactory answer to us and its proposal for dialogue with us is a trick to earn time," KCNA quoted Kim Myong Gil as saying.

"Explicitly speaking once again, I am not interested in such a meeting."

(With inputs from Reuters)