Kim Sung-han, who advises Yoon Suk-yeol on foreign policy, also said North Korea is likely to resume weapons testing, but his team aims to devise a road map with significant and swift benefits for Pyongyang if it takes concrete actions to denuclearize.

Yoon is the conservative main opposition People Power Party's candidate to run in the March 9 election, and is leading a tight race against Lee Jae-myung from outgoing President Moon Jae-in's party.

Relations between South Korea and China have been frayed since the installation in South Korea of the THAAD system in 2017 to better counter North Korea's evolving missile threats.

China argued the equipment's powerful radar could penetrate into its territory, and restricted economic and tourist exchanges, dealing a major blow to South Korea as its biggest trading partner.

The opposition has criticized Moon's promises of the so-called three “nos” — no additional THAAD deployments, no participation in a US-led global missile shield, and no creation of a trilateral military alliance involving Japan — made in late 2017 in a bid to appease China and normalize relations.

Yoon, a former prosecutor-general, seeks to not only scrap those promises, but also purchase a new THAAD interceptor battery to deploy nearer to Seoul, together with the existing six sets at the southeastern air base of Seongju, Kim said.

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