North Korea Fallout

US, South Korea to discuss deployment of missile defense system.

Seoul and Washington have agreed to begin talks about deploying the THADD missile defense system in South Korea, a defense official told reporters Sunday.

Yoo Jeh Seung, a senior South Korea Defense Ministry official, told reporters that the talks on THADD are aimed at bolstering South Korea-U.S. defense ties in the face of escalating tension with North Korea. The move is expected to raise tensions with China.

The announcement “is made in the context of a recurrent and continuing threat to peace and security to the Republic of Korea, to our Japanese friends, to the whole region. To the United States as well,” U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Samantha Power said Sunday.

North Korea defied international warnings earlier Sunday and launched a long-range rocket that the United Nations and others call a cover for a banned test of technology for a missile that could strike the U.S. mainland. The rocket was fired from North Korea’s west coast and its path was tracked separately by the U.S., Japan and South Korea.

In response to the launch, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting Sunday. The group said in a statement that it “strongly condemns” the rocket launch and would respond with “significant measures.”

The statement was approved by all 15 council members.

“There was a sense of the clock ticking and the need to move more expeditiously than the council had been able to do up to this point,” Power said. “We will come up with something touch. We will come up with something comprehensive.”

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