CIA chief visits S. Korea amid growing tension in region

SEOUL: America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director made an unannounced visit to South Korea, the US Embassy in Seoul confirmed Monday, amid heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
An embassy official said Mike Pompeo and his wife were in the South Korean capital on Monday, but would not say for how long. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
South Korean media said the CIA chief arrived in South Korea over the weekend for meetings with the head of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service and high-level officials in the presidential office. The US official, however, would not confirm any meetings beyond ones with officials at US forces in Korea and the US Embassy.
The visit comes after North Korea conducted another missile test on Saturday, and a US aircraft carrier group was in nearby waters.
In Australia, Prime Minister Malcom Turnbull used a commemoration of a World War II naval battle to warn North Korea against destabilizing the region.
“Today, Australia and the US continue to work with our allies to address new security threats around the world,” Turnbull said. “Together, we’re taking a strong message to North Korea that we will not tolerate reckless, dangerous threats to the peace and stability of our region.”
Turnbull is to meet US President Donald Trump for the first time Thursday in New York.
Meanwhile, a Japanese naval destroyer left port Monday on a reported mission of escorting US military ships off the coast as Japan tries to increase its military role in the region.
The helicopter carrier Izumo departed from the Yokosuka port near Tokyo in the morning.
The destroyer met up and escorted a US supply ship in the Pacific Ocean south of Tokyo, a new mission under the new security legislation allowing Japan’s military a greater role in overseas activity, according to Japanese media reports.
They said that the US supply ship is expected to refuel other American warships, including the USS Carl Vinson strike group, currently in the region.
Japan’s Defense Ministry only said that the Izumo left Monday to eventually participate in an international naval event in Singapore on May 15.
Tensions have increased as Pyongyang pushes to develop its missile and nuclear weapons programs in defiance of international sanctions and Trump warns of the potential threat Pyongyang’s action pose to other countries.
North Korea suggested on Monday it will continue its nuclear weapons tests, saying it will bolster its nuclear force “to the maximum” in a “consecutive and successive way at any moment” in the face of what it calls US aggression and hysteria.
“Now that the US is kicking up the overall racket for sanctions and pressure against the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea), pursuant to its new policy called ‘maximum pressure and engagement,’ the DPRK will speed up at the maximum pace the measure for bolstering its nuclear deterrence,” a spokesman for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by its official KCNA news agency.
North Korea’s “measures for bolstering the nuclear force to the maximum will be taken in a consecutive and successive way at any moment and any place decided by its supreme leadership,” the spokesman said.
South Korea said the US had reaffirmed it would shoulder the cost of deploying the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system to counter the North Korean threat, days after Trump said Seoul should pay for the $1 billion battery.
In a telephone call on Sunday, US National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, reassured his South Korean counterpart, Kim Kwan-jin, that the US alliance with South Korea was its top priority in the Asia-Pacific region, the South’s presidential office
“There is nothing right now facing this country and facing the region that is a bigger threat than what is happening in North Korea,” White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus told ABC’s “This Week.”
The THAAD deployment has drawn protests from China, which says the powerful radar that can penetrate its territory will undermine regional security, and from residents of the area in which it is being deployed, worried they will be a target for North Korean missiles.
North Korea, technically still at war with the South after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a treaty, regularly threatens to destroy the US, Japan and South Korea and has said before it will pursue its nuclear and missile programs to counter perceived US aggression.