US aircraft carrier arrives in South Korea in show of force as North's leader Kim exchanges messages with Putin

A United States nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan arrived in South Korea on Thursday. This deployment was seen as a show of strength in response to North Korea’s leader reaffirming his commitment to strengthening ties with Russia. The aircraft carrier and its group docked at the port of Busan in southeastern South Korea after taking part in a trilateral maritime exercise involving South Korea, the United States, and Japan earlier in the week, as reported by the South Korean Defence Ministry. The aircraft carrier is to stay in Busan until next Monday as part of a bilateral agreement to enhance “regular visibility” of US strategic assets to the Korean Peninsula in response to North Korea’s advancing nuclear programme, according to an earlier Defence Ministry statement. It’s the first arrival of a US aircraft carrier in South Korea in six months since the USS Nimitz docked at Busan in late March, the statement said. The arrival of the USS Ronald Reagan is expected to enrage North Korea, which views the deployment of such a powerful US military asset as a major security threat. When the USS Ronald Reagan staged joint military drills with South Korean forces in October 2022, North Korea said the carrier’s deployment was causing “considerably huge negative splash” in regional security and performed ballistic missile tests. The US carrier’s latest arrival comes as concerns grow that North Korea is pushing to get sophisticated weapons technologies from Russia in exchange for supplying ammunition to refill Russia’s conventional arms stores exhausted by its protracted war with Ukraine. Such concerns flared after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un visited Russia’s Far East last month to meet President Vladimir Putin and inspect key weapons-making facilities. North Korea leader Kim Jong Un exchanged letters with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday, vowing to advance their ties and wishing him victory over what he called hegemony and pressure from imperialists, Pyongyang’s state media KCNA said. The letters mark the 75th anniversary of bilateral relations and came about a month after Kim’s rare trip to Russia during which he and Putin discussed military cooperation, including North Korea’s satellite programme, and the war in Ukraine.