By Soo-hyang Choi and Trevor Hunnicutt
SEOUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The United States is&nbsp;not&nbsp;discussing joint&nbsp;nuclear&nbsp;exercises&nbsp;with&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea, President Joe&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;said on Monday, contradicting remarks by his&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korean counterpart as tensions flare with North&nbsp;Korea.
South&nbsp;Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol had said that Seoul and Washington are discussing possible joint&nbsp;exercises&nbsp;using&nbsp;U.S.&nbsp;nuclear&nbsp;assets, while North&nbsp;Korean leader Kim Jong Un branded the&nbsp;South&nbsp;its "undoubted enemy".
"No,"&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;said when asked by reporters at the White House if he was currently discussing joint&nbsp;nuclear&nbsp;exercises&nbsp;with&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea. He had just returned from a vacation in the&nbsp;U.S. Virgin Islands, where he was accompanied by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Yoon's comments, in a newspaper interview published on Monday, followed his call for "war preparation" with an "overwhelming" capability, after a year of a record number of North&nbsp;Korean missile tests and the intrusion of North&nbsp;Korean drones into the&nbsp;South&nbsp;last week.
"The&nbsp;nuclear&nbsp;weapons belong to the United States, but planning, information sharing,&nbsp;exercises&nbsp;and training should be jointly conducted by&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;and the United States," Yoon said in the interview with the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.
The newspaper quoted Yoon as saying the joint planning and&nbsp;exercises&nbsp;would be aimed at a more effective implementation of the&nbsp;U.S. "extended deterrence" and that Washington was also "quite positive" about the idea.
The term "extended deterrence" means the ability of the&nbsp;U.S. military, particularly its&nbsp;nuclear&nbsp;forces, to deter attacks on American allies.
The United States has long had an extended deterrence dialogue with Japan to talk about&nbsp;nuclear&nbsp;issues&nbsp;and initiated the same dialogue with&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;in 2016, said Thomas Countryman, the former acting undersecretary of state for arms control, who chaired the dialogue's first meeting.
"It's&nbsp;not&nbsp;immediately clear what in President Yoon's statement is new and what is a rephrasing of things that are already happening," Countryman said on Monday in a phone interview.
Now board chairman of the Arms Control Association, Countryman said Yoon's comments, directed at the&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korean people, appeared to be in response to what Countryman called North&nbsp;Korea's provocations and rhetoric.
"I do see this as an effort by both President Yoon and the&nbsp;Biden&nbsp;administration to reassure the government and the people of&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea, that the&nbsp;U.S. commitment remains solid."
Yoon's remarks were published a day after North&nbsp;Korean state media reported that its leader Kim had called for developing new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and an "exponential increase" of the country's&nbsp;nuclear&nbsp;arsenal.
At a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party last week, Kim said&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;had become the North's "undoubted enemy" and rolled out new military goals, hinting at another year of intensive weapons tests and tension.
Inter-Korean ties have long been testy but have been even more frayed since Yoon took office in May, promising a tougher stance on the North.
On Sunday, North&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;fired a short-range ballistic missile off its east coast, in a rare late-night, New Year's Day weapons test, following three ballistic missiles launched on Saturday.
The North's official KCNA news agency said the projectiles were fired from its super-large multiple rocket launcher system, which Kim said "has&nbsp;South&nbsp;Korea&nbsp;as a whole within the range of strike and is capable of carrying tactical&nbsp;nuclear&nbsp;warheads."
(Reporting by Soo-hyang Choi in Seoul and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Howard Goller and Jonathan Oatis)

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Biden says U.S. not discussing nuclear exercises with South Korea