South Korea and the US yesterday said they would begin their annual joint military drills on Monday next week, setting the stage for a likely surge in tensions with North Korea.
Pyongyang had offered a moratorium on nuclear testing if this year’s joint drills were canceled — a proposal rejected by Washington as an “implicit threat” to carry out a fourth nuclear test.
The Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises are a perennial source of volatile tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula.
Seoul and Washington insist that they are defensive in nature, but the drills are regularly condemned by Pyongyang as provocative rehearsals for invasion.
Key Resolve lasts about 11 days and consists mostly of computer simulations, while the eight-week Foal Eagle drill involves air, ground and naval field training, with about 200,000 South Korean and 3,700 US troops.
Both are to begin on Monday, with Key Resolve lasting until March 13 and Foal Eagle winding up on April 24, a South Korean Ministry of National Defense spokesman said.
North Korea has regularly resorted to missile tests and bellicose rhetoric to express its displeasure with the exercises in the past.
In 2013, the drills fueled an unusually sharp and protracted surge in tensions, with Pyongyang threatening a preemptive nuclear strike, and nuclear-capable US stealth bombers flying over the peninsula.
In a speech to the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of (North) Korea over the weekend, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un directed the nation’s army to ensure its combat readiness to react to “any form of war ignited by the enemy.”
There are close to 30,000 US troops permanently stationed in South Korea and, under current arrangements, the US would take operational command of the allies’ combined forces in the event of a conflict with North Korea.
“Exercising our multinational force is an important component of readiness and is fundamental to sustaining and strengthening the alliance,” US Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of the allies’ Combined Forces Command, said in a statement.
There was no immediate response from Pyongyang to the formal announcement of the drill dates, but South Korean defense ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said that nothing would derail the exercises.
“North Korea’s position and provocative remarks will have no impact,” he told a news conference.
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