The US and South Korea yesterday started a low-key joint military drill as a diplomatic thaw over North Korea gathered pace.
Tension on the flashpoint peninsula has shown signs of easing after the nuclear-armed North proposed summits with the South and their “imperialist enemy” the US.
The annual Foal Eagle drill — a series of field training exercises involving about 11,500 US and 290,000 South Korean troops — began early yesterday, a South Korean Ministry of Defense spokesman said.
The drill — which was delayed to avoid clashing with February’s Winter Olympics in the South — is to be held for a month, about half the time it usually lasts.
This year’s drills feature fewer strategic weapons, such as a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the South Korean military said earlier.
The deployment of such powerful weapons at past drills has frequently drawn an angry response from North Korea.
The two allies are also set to stage the annual Key Resolve drill — a tabletop exercise using mainly computer-based simulations — for the usual duration of two weeks beginning late this month.
Pyongyang, which habitually slams the joint army drills between South Korea and the US as a rehearsal for invasion, has remained relatively quiet on the issue.
The Foal Eagle drill started the same day as a historic concert by South Korean pop stars in Pyongyang, which was to be staged late yesterday as a peace gesture ahead of this month’s inter-Korea summit.
Eleven South Korean acts — including popular K-pop girl group Red Velvet — were to perform in the North Korean capital — the first such concert in more than a decade.
The flurry of reconciliatory moves comes after the Pyeongchang Winter Games, which North Korea used to mount a charm offensive, sending athletes, cheerleaders and even North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s powerful sister as a delegate.
Kim, who last week met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in Beijing on his first overseas trip as leader, on Saturday met International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach in Pyongyang, thanking him for helping to bring about a “dramatic thawing” of tensions on the peninsula.
Kim is set to hold a summit with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on April 27 at the border truce village of Panmunjom — the third time ever that any leaders of the two rivals have met.
PEACE AT LAST? UN experts had warned of threats and attacks ahead of the voting, but after a turbulent period, Bangladesh has seemingly reacted to the result with calm The Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) yesterday celebrated a landslide victory in the first elections held since a deadly 2024 uprising, with party leader Tarique Rahman to become prime minister. Bangladesh Election Commission figures showed that the BNP alliance had won 212 seats, compared with 77 for the Islamist-led Jamaat-e-Islami alliance. The US embassy congratulated Rahman and the BNP for a “historic victory,” while India praised Rahman’s “decisive win” in a significant step after recent rocky relations with Bangladesh. China and Pakistan, which grew closer to Bangladesh since the uprising and the souring of ties with India, where ousted Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina
FAST-TRACK: The deal is to be sent to the legislature, but time is of the essence, as Trump had raised tariffs on Seoul when it failed to quickly ratify a similar pact Taiwan and the US on Thursday signed a trade agreement that caps US tariffs on Taiwanese goods at 15 percent and provides preferential market access for US industrial and agricultural exports, including cars, and beef and pork products. The Taiwan-US Agreement on Reciprocal Trade confirms a 15 percent US tariff for Taiwanese goods, and grants Taiwanese semiconductors and related products the most-favorable-treatment under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, the Executive Yuan said. In addition, 2,072 items — representing nearly 20 percent of Taiwan’s total exports to the US — would be exempt from additional tariffs and be subject only to
The Taiwan Space Agency (TASA) yesterday released the first images from its Formosat-8A satellite, featuring high-resolution views of Hsinchu Science Park (新竹科學園區), Tainan’s Anping District (安平), Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor (興達港), Japan’s National Stadium in Tokyo and Barcelona airport. Formosat-8A, named the “Chi Po-lin Satellite” after the late Taiwanese documentary filmmaker Chi Po-lin (齊柏林), was launched on Nov. 29 last year. It is designed to capture images at a 1m resolution, which can be sharpened to 0.7m after processing, surpassing the capabilities of its predecessor, Formosat-5, the agency said. It is the first of TASA’s eight-satellite Formosat-8 constellation to be sent into orbit and
President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday approved a special pardon exempting a woman in her 80s convicted of killing her disabled son from imprisonment. After carefully reviewing the case, Lai pardoned Lin Liu Lung-tzu (林劉龍子) from the prison sentence while acknowledging her conviction, citing the extreme circumstances she faced, Presidential Office spokeswoman Karen Kuo (郭雅慧) said in a statement. Under Article 3 of the Amnesty Act (赦免法), the two kinds of pardons are exempting an offender from the execution of a punishment or declaring the punishment to be invalid. Kuo said Lin Liu had spent more than 50 years caring for her son, before
RSS