South Korea reached deal with United States for ballistic missile with range up to 800 km 0710121.

The extended range can now cover all of the DPRK, South Korea's wartime enemy whose arsenal includes intermediate-range ballistic missiles with a range of 3,000 kilometers capable of striking the entire Korean peninsula as well as U.S. military installations in Japan and Guam.

The revised agreement with the United States, South Korea's ally, keeps the current payload limit unchanged at 500 kilometers, according to Chun Young-woo, the presidential secretary for foreign affairs and national security.

Currently South Korean army are only equipped with the American-made MGM-140 Army Tactical Missile System (ATacMS) is a surface-to-surface missile (SSM). In 2002 the South Korean Army purchased 111 ATACMS Block I and 110 ATACMS Block IA missiles, which were deployed in 2004. An affiliated company of the Hanwha Group of Korea produces munitions for the missile systems under a license from Lockheed Martin.

The ATACMS can be fired from MLRS launchers, including the M270, M270 IPDS, M270A1, and HIMARS. An ATACMS launch container has a lid patterned with six circles like a standard MLRS rocket lid. a total of 58 MLRS Multiple Rocket Launcher System M270/M270A1 are in services with the South Korean army.

South Korea had long called for a revision of the missile pact it signed with Washington in 1979, which stopped the country from developing ballistic missiles of longer ranges despite growing missile threats posed by its northern neighbor.

The extension, however, runs counter to a global arms control agreement known as the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), an informal and voluntary association of 34 countries with a goal of stopping the spread of unmanned delivery systems capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction.

As a member of the agreement, South Korea had opted to build slower, surface-skimming cruise missiles with a range of up to 1, 500 kilometers, which are not subject to the MTCR.