South Korea and the US commenced joint military exercises yesterday amid angry protests by North Korea, which denounced the maneuvers as preparations for a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the communist country.
About 25,000 US troops and an undisclosed number of South Korean soldiers are participating in the annual exercises, dubbed RSOI and Foal Eagle. The weeklong maneuvers involve a computer-simulated war game with field drills aimed at improving US and South Korean forces' defense capabilities, according to the US military.
"The purpose of the drill is defensive," said Kim Yong-kyu, a spokesman for the US military command in Seoul.
Kim dismissed as "nonsense" North Korea's claim that the military exercises were preparations for an invasion.
North Korea has stepped up its anti-US rhetoric over the maneuvers, vowing to take an unspecified "strong measure of self-defense."
"War exercises are a dangerous war gamble to invade the DPRK [Democratic People's Republic of Korea] as they may go over to an actual war any moment," the North's official Minju Joson newspaper said yesterday in a commentary carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency.
"If the US dares ignite a nuclear war in this land, the army and people of the DPRK will ... mobilize its tremendous deterrent for self-defense ... wipe out the aggressors to the last man.
Earlier this week, North Korea also suggested it had the ability to launch a pre-emptive attack on the US, and said it had built atomic weapons to counter the US nuclear threat.
About 29,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-1953 Korean War, which ended in a ceasefire, not a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas technically still at war.
The number of US troops is set to decline to 25,000 by 2008 as part of the Pentagon's worldwide realignment of its forces.
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