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| A South Korean M-SAM Launcher (File Photo) |
SEOUL, Aug. 30 (Xinhua) -- South Korea raised its 2017 defense budget to speed up efforts at building its homegrown missile defense system amid an advance in nuclear and missile technologies of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
Allotted defense budget for 2017 was 40.33 trillion won (36.1 billion U.S. dollars), up 4.0 percent from the previous year, according to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance. If the budget bill is approved through the National Assembly, it would surpass 40 trillion won for the first time.
Budget to build the Korea Air and Missile Defense (KAMD), the country's indigenous missile defense system, reached 533.1 billion won in 2017, up 40.5 percent from a year earlier.
The KAMD, which Seoul's military aims to deploy by mid-2020s, consists of medium-range surface-to-air missile (M-SAM), long-range surface-to-air missiles (L-SAM), U.S. Patriot missiles and early-warning radars to shoot down DPRK missiles at a terminal phase.
The acceleration in the KAMD development came amid what Seoul says growing nuclear and missile threats from Pyongyang following its fourth nuclear test in January and the launch in February of a long-range rocket.
Read the full story at Xinhua