Amidst heightening tensions between the two estranged Koreas and North Korea’s increasingly frequent missile tests and drills in the recently Demilitarized Zone in North Korea, South Korea, along with the USA has launched a series of mock drills on Saturday. The joint military exercise that is to last 8 weeks was kicked off as sailors and marines charged onto a beach, while others set off mild explosives. As per the South Korean defense ministry’s statement, nearly 300,000 of their own troops were involved in the exercise, alongside 17,000 Americans and small contingents from New Zealand and Australia. The spokesperson also emphasized that the exercise was of the ‘largest scale ever’. Moreover, a C-130 military plane dropped parachuting military-men in the early afternoon at hillsides as a part of the exercise.
The friction between the two counterparts has only been rising upwards over the years, especially in the last few months, wherein North Korea has claimed to have tested hydrogen bombs and firing a satellite into the orbit, both of them critically violating the United Nations’ code. In response, the Security Council arrived at a unanimous decision to place more severe sanctions on the troublesome North Korea in the early days of this month, a rare experience in the aggressive council. To this decision, North Korea has continuously been projecting its defiance by launching short-range projectiles into the sea and announcing that it had made a ground-breaking discovery of building miniature nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, these yearly choreographed military efforts of South Korea have been consistently aggravating to the already stretched relations.
However, the US has said in its statement that the United Nations Command had informed the People’s Army of North Korea of the ‘non-provocative’ nature of the drill. A rather ‘provoked’ North Korea has responded with a threat to ‘preemptive nuclear strikes’. It is of the opinion that the strikes were ‘reckless’ on the part of South Korea and they would have to look into the exact nature of the drill to discover any discrepancies in its intentions.
“As the joint military exercises to be staged by the enemies are regarded as the most undisguised nuclear war drills aimed to infringe upon the sovereignty of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, its military counteraction will be more preemptive and offensive nuclear strike to cope with them,” stated a North Korean news agency on March 7.
“We’ve been planning for this exercise for over a year,” said…At the end of the day, we sincerely believe in peace through strength, and it is in the strength of our alliance that we believe that we can deter and avoid war,” commented Brigadier General John Jansen of the U.S. Marines, insisting that the exercise was not an act of provocation because of the increased tensions in recent times.
Yet, hundreds of Korean police officers had to be sent to the coastal areas where the drills were held to hold off flag-waving protesters, some of whom had traveled for hours for the same. They held placards that read ‘Proceed with Peace Treaty’ and ‘No War’. “This drill is not defensive. It’s an act of war. I wish this aggressive stance, including that of North Korea, would stop hostile drills and start a peaceful atmosphere,” quoted Choi Eu Na, a member of a group named Anti-War Peace Action.
60 years ago, the two warring brothers of Korea had signed a peace treaty, ending the Korean war in 1953. Despite this, the two states have been, essentially, in a state of war ever since. This has led to the US placing thousands of its troops in South Korea, a mission that South Korea believes to be in the interests of its defense.
Source: CNN
Tags: North Korea South Korea
