A U.S. senator proposed Thursday that next year's defense budget bill include calls for deployment of the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea to beef up defense against growing nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

Sen. Cory Gardner, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on East Asia and the Pacific, made the proposal in an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017, citing "an imminent and growing threat" from the North.

"It is the sense of Congress ... that the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missile defense system would effectively complement and significantly strengthen the existing missile defense capabilities of the United States on the Korean Peninsula," the proposed amendment said.

It also said that THAAD is "a limited defensive system that does not represent a threat to any of the neighbors" of South Korea, a statement apparently designed to counter China's claims that the system can be used offensively.

The amendment welcomes ongoing talks between Seoul and Washington about the issue and calls for considering deployment "as a sovereign choice" of South Korea and "a bilateral decision of the alliance" to protect against the growing ballistic missile threat from the North.

"North Korea's growing number of ballistic missile launches must be met with additional action from the United States in the form of bolstered defense for our ally, South Korea, and Americans abroad," Gardner said in a statement.

"My amendment would strengthen existing missile defense capabilities on the South Korean peninsula, and send yet another signal to the maniac in Pyongyang that the United States will not stand by as it bullies its neighbors and threatens stability in the region," he said. (Yonhap)