CNN reported yesterday that North Korea has been searching for one of its submarines that has been missing for days off its east coast.
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USA spy satellites, aircraft and ships have been watching as the North Korean navy searched for the missing sub, the report added. They are not certain if it has sunk, or simply lost contact with its base.
On Saturday, 300,000 South Korean troops, 17,000 American soldiers and small detachment forces from New Zealand and Australia began an eight-week series of military drills exercises.
While Pyongyang often issues saber-rattling statements during annual USA and South Korean joint exercises, “this year the level of anger is much greater”, says Mike Chinoy, a former CNN senior global correspondent and the author of “Meltdown: The inside story of the North Korean nuclear crisis”.
The North’s military said it was prepared to counter the US and South Korean forces “with an ultra-precision blitzkrieg strike of the Korean style” .
The vessel had been reportedly operating off the North Korean coast earlier this week when it disappeared. But he told a group of reporters that the operation provides a “good example of the kind of capabilities that we have with our ally, the Republic of Korea, that deters anybody from any type of provocation”. Thursday, the North fired two short-range ballistic missiles off the east coast of South Korea. This month the North conducted drills with what it said were newly developed large caliber rocket launchers. The actions of the eccentric nation sparked a moment of unity with member states of the United Nations Security Council, agreeing to punish Pyongyang with new sanctions, North Korea had shown its discontentment by firing short range projectiles, the regime claimed to be miniaturized nuclear bombs.
Pyongyang has denounced the maneuvers as a practice for invasion, calling for them to be called off to avoid military tensions between South and North Korea and improve bilateral ties. It is expected that Kim will use the Workers’ Party convention, the party’s first since 1980, to announce important state goals and shake up the country’s political elite to further consolidate his power.
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The two Koreas remain technically at war since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.
