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.
A Chinese aircraft carrier group entered Japan’s economic waters over the weekend, before exiting to conduct drills involving fighter jets, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said yesterday. The Liaoning aircraft carrier, two missile destroyers and one fast combat supply ship sailed about 300km southwest of Japan’s easternmost island of Minamitori on Saturday, a ministry statement said. It was the first time a Chinese aircraft carrier had entered that part of Japan’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ), a ministry spokesman said. “We think the Chinese military is trying to improve its operational capability and ability to conduct operations in distant areas,” the spokesman said. China’s growing
Nine retired generals from Taiwan, Japan and the US have been invited to participate in a tabletop exercise hosted by the Taipei School of Economics and Political Science Foundation tomorrow and Wednesday that simulates a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan in 2030, the foundation said yesterday. The five retired Taiwanese generals would include retired admiral Lee Hsi-min (李喜明), joined by retired US Navy admiral Michael Mullen and former chief of staff of the Japan Self-Defense Forces general Shigeru Iwasaki, it said. The simulation aims to offer strategic insights into regional security and peace in the Taiwan Strait, it added. Foundation chair Huang Huang-hsiung
PUBLIC WARNING: The two students had been tricked into going to Hong Kong for a ‘high-paying’ job, which sent them to a scam center in Cambodia Police warned the public not to trust job advertisements touting high pay abroad following the return of two college students over the weekend who had been trafficked and forced to work at a cyberscam center in Cambodia. The two victims, surnamed Lee (李), 18, and Lin (林), 19, were interviewed by police after landing in Taiwan on Saturday. Taichung’s Chingshui Police Precinct said in a statement yesterday that the two students are good friends, and Lin had suspended her studies after seeing the ad promising good pay to work in Hong Kong. Lee’s grandfather on Thursday reported to police that Lee had sent
BUILDUP: US General Dan Caine said Chinese military maneuvers are not routine exercises, but instead are ‘rehearsals for a forced unification’ with Taiwan China poses an increasingly aggressive threat to the US and deterring Beijing is the Pentagon’s top regional priority amid its rapid military buildup and invasion drills near Taiwan, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday. “Our pacing threat is communist China,” Hegseth told the US House of Representatives Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense during an oversight hearing with US General Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Beijing is preparing for war in the Indo-Pacific as part of its broader strategy to dominate that region and then the world,” Hegseth said, adding that if it succeeds, it could derail
RSS