SKorea, US start annual drills amid NKorean threat
South Korea — South Korean and U.S. troops started yearly army drills Monday that North Korea slammed being a rehearsal for an invasion that can set off a nuclear war around the divided peninsula.
Regardless of North Korea’s risk to retaliate, South Korea and the United states went ahead using the drills, which are the allies’ very first key combined military workouts given that the North shelled a front-line South Korean island in November, killing four men and women.
That barrage arrived 8 months immediately after 46 sailors had been killed whenever a South Korean warship was sunk, an assault that an international investigation blamed on a North Korean torpedo, although Pyongyang denies it had been concerned. Animosity more than the bloodshed drove ties between the Koreas to one of their lowest levels in decades.
About 12,800 U.S. troops and a few 200,000 South Korean soldiers and reservists are to participate within the drills, which are aimed at defending South Korea and responding to any assault.
The most important component on the drills, that will involve laptop or computer war games and live-firing exercises, will final eleven days, even though some area coaching will continue until finally late April, based on the South Korea-U.S. joint forces command in Seoul.
The drills “are planned months ahead of time, and they’re not connected to any present world activities,” the joint command said inside a statement.
Hours soon after the exercises started, North Korea warned of the nuclear war around the peninsula
“It’s an anti-national scheme aimed at prolonging the stage of confrontation and pressure to understand a plot to start a northward invasion,” the North’s most important Rodong Sinmun newspaper mentioned inside a commentary carried from the official Korean Central Information Agency. “The hazard of the nuclear war around the Korean peninsula is deepening.”
On Sunday, the North mentioned that if provoked, its army would flip Seoul right into a “sea of flames” and commence a full-scale war with “merciless” counterattacks.
South Korean and U.S. officials have repeatedly stated the drills are purely defensive.
“Denouncing these types of drills being an aggression and provocation won’t be considered a assist to South-North Korea relations at all,” South Korean Unification Ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung advised reporters Monday.
A South Korean military official mentioned there are actually no suspicious actions by the North’s army. The official spoke on situation of anonymity, citing workplace guidelines.
Immediately after weeks of higher tension following its November bombardment in the island, North Korea lately pushed for dialogue with South Korea and expressed a desire to return to stalled international talks on its nuclear system.
Army officers in the two Koreas met previously this month but failed to make progress.
The two Koreas are nonetheless technically at war mainly because the 1950-53 Korean War ended with the armistice, not a peace treaty.
