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South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo said that he asked his American counterpart, Jim Mattis, during talks at the Pentagon last week for strategic assets like U.S. aircraft carriers, nuclear submarines and B-52 bombers to be sent to South Korea more regularly.

“I told him that it would be good for strategic assets to be sent regularly to the Korean Peninsula and that some South Korean lawmakers and media are strongly pushing for tactical nuclear weapons (to be redeployed),” Song told a parliamentary hearing on North Korea’s nuclear test, without disclosing Mattis’ response.

Photo by Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP

A poll that YTN, a cable news channel, commissioned in August found that 68 per cent of respondents said they supported bringing tactical nuclear weapons back to South Korea.

On Monday, the day after North Korean conducted a nuclear test easily powerful enough to devastate a large city, Song appeared to throw his support behind the idea.

“The redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons is an alternative worth a full review,” Song said, echoing a position closely associated with conservatives in South Korea, not progressives like Moon Jae-in, who was elected president in May after vowing to engage with North Korea.

The main opposition Liberty Korea Party, which is staunchly conservative, last month added bringing American nuclear weapons back to its party platform.

Photo by STR/AFP/Getty Images

The United States had about 100 weapons like short-range artillery with nuclear warheads stationed in South Korea until 1991. Then President George H.W. Bush signed the Presidential Nuclear Initiative and withdrew all naval and land-based tactical nuclear weapons that had been deployed abroad.