US President Donald Trump has been briefed on a South Korean party's calls for the redeployment of tactical nuclear arms to the Korean Peninsula to counter growing North Korean threats, a party official said.

Khang Hyo-shang, the spokesman of the main opposition Liberty Korea Party, said in Washington on Monday (local time) that the Central Intelligence Agency kept Trump informed of the public sentiment in Korea about the redeployment.

Khang was accompanying party chief Hong Joon-pyo and other lawmakers who were in the US capital to drum up support for the re-dispatching of the US nuclear arsenal withdrawn from the peninsula in 1991.


Amid Pyongyang's continued provocations, including the Sept. 3 nuclear test, the party has demanded the redeployment to achieve a "nuclear balance of power" with the North, which it says now enjoys a "nuclear monopoly."

"CIA has said that it has always been paying attention to the words of South Korea's main opposition party chief, and that it has reported them to President Trump," Khang told reporters after visiting the agency's Korea Mission Center. 

Both Seoul and Washington have remained negative about the redeployment. The former has stuck to its non-proliferation principle, stressing the reintroduction of nukes would jeopardize its rationale for Pyongyang's denuclearization.

During talks with CIA officials, Hong reiterated that the reintroduction of tactical nukes is the "only way" to prevent another armed conflict on the peninsula and address the longstanding nuclear standoff, Khang said.

"Our party delegation and the CIA officials shared the view that we are short on time in handling the North's nuclear crisis," Khang said.

Later in the day, the delegation had a dinner meeting with former US Ambassador to Seoul Alexander Vershbow and former US Eighth Army Commander John D. Johnson, party officials said.

The party's delegation is scheduled to head back home Friday. (Yonhap)