Ashton Carter, the US Secretary of Defense, visited Japan and South Korea this week to discuss about North Korea’s growing missile power and possible delivery of American military equipment to these two countries.

Upon his arrival to South Korea, two short-range missile lunches off the west coast of North Korea were reported by South Korea’s Defense Ministry. Carter’s comment was ironical “If it was a welcoming message to me, I’m flattered.”

Carter first visited Japan on Tuesday where he met with Japanese officials at Yokota air base. On Thursday he arrived to South Korea, when two launches were fired.

Both visits were a part of strengthening process between the governments and Defense Departments and about possible delivery of brand new American military equipment as precautionary measures since North Korea has been threatening for quite some time with their missile and nuclear program development.

“Their missile inventory is growing and their willingness to test those missiles appears to be growing as we’ve just seen today,” Carter said and added “It’s just a reminder of how tense things are on the Korean peninsula.”

US officials promised to secure this region and deploy state of the art weaponry in Asia. What South Korea needs is sophisticated air missile defense, known as THAAD. Also, if needed, the US government is ready to negotiate the delivery of some additional equipment like cyber warfare units and stealth bombers in addition.

This kind of deal could cause rage in neighboring countries which have already spoken out against South Korea getting THAAD, like Russia and China.

The missile launch is just a small provocation by the North since their hacker groups are attacking both American and South Korean systems. The most recent attack was the hacking of Sony Pictures server because of the controversial movie “The Interview” in which two American undercover agents are supposed to kill leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un.

Also, in 2010 the South Korean naval corvette Cheonan was destroyed and 46 people lost their lives. Investigation confirmed that the cause of this “accident” was a North Korean torpedo, but Pyongyang never admitted responsibility for the attack.

There are around 30,000 US soldiers already in South Korea, permanently stationed and ready to help out in the case of conflict with North Korea. The countries are theoretically speaking still in war since their conflict was not ended by treaty in 1953, but by ceasefire.