South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on Tuesday opened his state visit to Washington by touring a NASA facility with US Vice President Kamala Harris, while an official said that a US nuclear missile submarine would visit South Korea as part of a reinforced “nuclear shield.”
Before Harris and Yoon’s visit to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, the two countries signed a joint statement on cooperation in space communications and navigation, and received briefings from NASA scientists about cooperative efforts on space exploration and climate change.
“Our alliance is leading on some of the most important and pressing issues of our time,” Harris said in remarks with Yoon by her side at the NASA facility.
Photo: AFP
Yoon, for his part, recalled his exhilaration as a third-grader watching on television as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin stepped off Apollo 11 to become the first humans to set foot on the moon in 1969.
NASA and Seoul’s Korea Aerospace Research Institute are working together to support future lunar exploration efforts, he said.
Yoon said the statement the two countries signed “will serve as a springboard for taking space cooperation between our two allies to the next level of a space alliance.”
“The universe holds great promise as the stage where synergies from international solidarity and partnerships can deliver their greatest benefits,” Yoon said.
Yoon yesterday was scheduled to visit the White House, an unnamed US official said.
US President Joe Biden and Yoon would issue a document called the Washington Declaration outlining how in addition to a beefed-up US military umbrella, the US would increase information sharing with Seoul.
“The United States has not taken these steps, really, since the height of the Cold War with our very closest handful of allies in Europe,” the official said.
“And we are seeking to ensure that by undertaking these new procedures, these new steps, that our commitment to extended deterrence is unquestionable,” the official added.
Other officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that there were no plans to station US nuclear weapons in South Korea.
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