SEOUL, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- South Korean civic activists on Tuesday clamored against the trilateral security cooperation with the United States and Japan as the defense chiefs of South Korea and the United States held talks in Seoul.
"Oppose (South) Korea-U.S.-Japan alliance" and "stop extended deterrence," a group of activists from the Solidarity for Peace and Reunification of Korea (SPARK) chanted the slogans near the South Korean defense ministry building.
South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup and U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin had a bilateral meeting in the building, unveiling a joint statement that "reaffirmed measures to enhance the implementation of U.S. extended deterrence."
Lee and Austin agreed to hold the Deterrence Strategy Committee tabletop exercise in February, pledging to "further expand and bolster the level and scale of this year's combined exercises and training."
According to the statement, the defense chiefs also discussed measures to strengthen regional security cooperation, including South Korea-U.S.-Japan trilateral security cooperation, agreeing to hold defense talks among the three countries at the earliest opportunity.
The SPARK activists urged both South Korean and U.S. authorities to scrap the U.S. policy of extended deterrence as the U.S. policy of deploying strategic assets and conducting large-scale military exercises encourages a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.
One of the activists noted that if the South Korea-U.S.-Japan military alliance is established and the trilateral military exercises are expanded, it would further jeopardize South Korean security as it indicates South Korea becoming an outpost to protect the United States and Japan.
A separate group of peace activists also gathered near the defense ministry building to protest against the trilateral military cooperation that would escalate tensions further on the peninsula. ■