US deploys destroyer off Korean peninsula

SOUTH KOREA: The United States has placed a destroyer off the South Korean coast to defend against a possible missile strike, the latest in a series of publicised US deployments to counter North Korean threats.

The USS Fitzgerald was moved to the southwestern coast after taking part in annual military exercises, instead of returning to its home port in Japan, a US defence official told AFP Monday on condition of anonymity.

The deployment came hours after a gathering of North Korea's rubber-stamp parliament adopted a law formalising the country's status as a nuclear weapons state.

The Korean peninsula has been caught in a cycle of escalating tensions since the North launched a long-range rocket in December and followed it with a nuclear test in February.

Subsequent UN sanctions and annual South Korea-US military exercises have been used by Pyongyang to justify a wave of increasingly dire threats against Seoul and Washington, including warnings of missile strikes and nuclear war.

AFP