SEOUL: South Korea has agreed to buy US weapons worth “billions of dollars” to guard against threats from nuclear-armed North Korea, US President Donald Trump said Tuesday. After a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-In, Trump also said the US — the South’s key security guarantor — had agreed to remove a warhead weight limit on Seoul’s ballistic missiles.

Trump arrived in Seoul on Tuesday for a two-day visit as part of his Asia tour amid high tensions over North Korea’s weapons drive. Trump said the South — a key Asian ally which hosts 28,500 US troops — would be buying a large amount of US weapons “whether it’s planes, whether it’s missiles, no matter what it is”. “South Korea will be ordering billions of dollars of that equipment, which for them makes a lot of sense and for us it means jobs, reducing our trade deficit with South Korea,” he said.—AFP