South Korea yesterday began two days of war games to practice defending the disputed Dokdo Islands off its east coast — against an unlikely attack by Japan.
The drills come just days after US President Donald Trump announced the suspension of long-running US joint exercises with South Korea.
The two-day exercise — tiny compared with the suspended US-South Korea war games — would involve six warships and seven aircraft and had begun, the South Korean Ministry of Defense said.
A unit of marines would land on the largely barren rocky islets, inhabited by about 40 people, mostly police officers, which are known as Takeshima in Japan, which also claims them.
“The Dokdo defense drill is a routine training conducted to prevent an invasion from external forces,” ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said.
Tokyo reacted angrily to the “extremely deplorable” drills.
While an attack from Japan is deemed highly unlikely, South Korea first staged the drills in 1986 and has conducted them twice a year since 2003.
In other developments, Seoul on Monday said sanctions against North Korea could be eased once it takes “substantive steps towards denuclearization,” seemingly setting the bar lower than Washington for such a move.
Last week’s Singapore summit produced only a vague statement in which North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
“Our stance is that the sanctions must remain in place until North Korea takes meaningful, substantive steps toward denuclearization,” South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said.
Seoul and Washington shared the same “big picture” view and would continue close consultations, she added.
The comments come just days after the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the UN Security Council should consider easing the economic punishment of Pyongyang.
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