THE United States and its ally South Korea are in talks toward sending further strategic U.S. assets to the Korean Peninsula, a day after a U.S. B-52 bomber flew over South Korea in response to North Korea’s nuclear test last week.

    “The United States and South Korea are continuously and closely having discussions on additional deployment of strategic assets,” Kim Min-seok, spokesman at the South Korean defense ministry, said yesterday, declining to give specifics.

    South Korean media said strategic assets Washington may utilize in South Korea included B-2 bombers, nuclear-powered submarines and F-22 stealth fighter jets.

    Seoul also said that it would restrict access to the jointly run Kaesong industrial complex just north of the heavily militarized inter-Korean border to the “minimum necessary level” starting from today.

    North Korea says it exploded a hydrogen bomb last Wednesday, although the United States and outside experts doubt that the North had achieved such a technological advance in its fourth nuclear test. The test angered China, which was not given advance notice, and the United States.

    In a show of force and support for its allies in the region, the United States on Sunday sent a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber based in Guam on a flight over South Korea.

    Separately, South Korea and Japan used their shared military hotline for the first time in the aftermath of North Korea’s nuclear test, Seoul’s defense ministry said, a sign the North’s provocation is pushing the two longtime rivals, which are Washington’s main allies in the region, closer together.

    South Korea has also resumed anti-North broadcasts using loudspeakers along the border, a tactic that the North considers insulting.(SD-Agencies)