South Korea says will discuss new missile defense with U.S.

SEOUL (Reuters) - South Korea said on Sunday it and the United States would begin discussion on deploying an advanced missile-defense system to South Korea to counter the growing threat of North Korea’s weapons capabilities. U.S. military officials have said the sophisticated system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) was needed in South Korea, which faces the threat of an increasingly advanced North Korean missile program. "If THAAD is deployed to the Korean peninsula, it will be only operated against North Korea," Yoo Jeh-seung, a senior official at the South Korean defense ministry said in a joint news conference with Thomas S. Vandal, commander of the Eighth U.S. Army based in South Korea. North Korea launched a long-range rocket earlier on Sunday carrying what it has called a satellite. South Korea, other neighbors and Washington denounced the launch as a missile test. (Reporting by Ju-min Park; Editing by Robert Birsel)