Nuclear-armed North Korea yesterday marked a military anniversary with a massive conventional firing drill, Seoul said, as a US guided-missile submarine docked in South Korea amid tensions over Pyongyang’s weapons ambitions.
Speculation had mounted that the North could carry out a sixth nuclear test or another missile launch to mark 85 years since the founding of its army.
However, no such event — which usually happens in the morning — had taken place by mid-afternoon, and instead the South Korean Ministry of Defense said Pyongyang was conducting a “massive fire drill” in the eastern port city of Wonsan.
Photo: Reuters
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency cited a government source as saying the exercise was the North’s “largest ever” and presumed to have been overseen by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Washington has sent the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson to the Korean Peninsula, where it is expected to arrive — after a derision-provoking delay — later this week.
Confusion had clouded the carrier’s whereabouts earlier this month after US officials indicated it was sailing toward North Korea when in fact it was heading south.
The vessel will take part in joint naval drills with the South’s forces to “demonstrate Seoul and Washington’s strong determination to punish North Korean provocations,” the South Korean Navy said.
They will take place in the East Sea, the South’s name for the Sea of Japan, it said, and the two allies will also begin joint naval exercises in the West Sea — what it calls the Yellow Sea — on Tuesday “in relation to the current security situation.”
The nuclear-powered US submarine USS Michigan yesterday made a port call at Busan in the South in another show of force.
Meanwhile, top nuclear envoys from Japan, South Korea and the US yesterday in Tokyo vowed “stern action” against any fresh North Korean provocations.
US Special Representative on North Korea policy Joseph Yun said he discussed US policy to “enhance pressure” on the North, “because we really do not believe that North Korea is ready to engage us towards denuclearization.”
The trio also agreed that China and Russia should play a bigger role in reining in the North, said Kim Hong-kyun, South Korea’s chief envoy on the issue.
“Cooperation with China and Russia is the most important for effective pressure on North Korea,” he said.
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