SpaceWar.com reports: “South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said Tuesday that the alliance with the United States has been raised to a ‘nuclear-based’ one capable of warding off threats from North Korea in the wake of new joint deterrence guidelines.

Last week, Yoon and U.S. President Joe Biden authorized the nuclear deterrence guidelines on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington, D.C.

‘The South Korea-U.S. alliance has been firmly upgraded to a nuclear-based alliance in name and reality,’ Yoon said during a cabinet meeting.

‘Whether in wartime or peacetime, U.S. nuclear assets are specially assigned to missions on the Korean Peninsula,’ he said. ‘Now we have established a posture that can respond quickly and effectively to any kind of North Korean nuclear threat.’

Washington has worked to reassure Seoul that its nuclear umbrella will be sufficient to protect South Korea. The allies have held expanded joint military drills and simulated ‘table-top’ exercises while U.S. assets such as aircraft carriers, a B-52 nuclear bomber and a nuclear ballistic missile submarine are regularly deployed to the peninsula…”