Her comments came a day after the Unification Ministry in Seoul urged all citizens to be on guard against possible North Korean assassination attempts on defectors and anti-Pyongyang activists in the South.
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“They should properly know that from this moment the first-strike combined units of the KPA keep themselves fully ready to mount a pre-emptive retaliatory strike at all enemy attack groups involved in Ulchi Freedom Guardian”, the statement read.
The US-led UN Command Military Armistice Commission declared it had notified the North Korean army that the UFG exercises were “non-provocative”. But the latest warning comes at a time of more tension following the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a USA plan to place a high-tech missile defence system in South Korea.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency said it appears that the North planted the mines to prevent front-line North Korean soldiers from defecting to South Korea via Panmunjom.
About 50,000 South Korean soldiers and some 25,000 USA troops are joining in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which runs until September the second.
The Xinhua News Agency, China’s state-run media outlet, argues, “The large-scale joint military drills conducted by South Korea and the United States will jeopardize peace and stability in Northeast Asia, especially after tensions have escalated by the planned deployment of a us missile defense system in South Korea”.
North Korea warned Monday that it would launch a preemptive nuclear attack against the United States and South Korea if they showed the “slightest sign of aggression” toward Pyongyang while conducting their annual military drills.
The North is highly likely to make provocations, including terrorist attacks, against the South to stir up internal unrest and cause disorder in South Korean society, the president said in a meeting with senior security aides Monday. According to the Korea Times, the air force is practising to “pre-emptively remove the North’s ballistic missile threats by proactively blocking the missiles and their supply route”.
In response to this year’s drills, North Korea, which views the war games as practice for an invasion, threatened a “preemptive nuclear strike”.
Mr Thae’s defection followed the flight to Seoul this year of 12 waitresses from a North Korean restaurant in China. When he recently was unable to meet a state-mandated benchmark, one of his family members died while in custody, according to multiple South Korean press reports. Until recently, Seoul resisted U.S. pressure to coordinate more closely with Japan, given Tokyo’s brutal colonial record on the Korean Peninsula before 1945.
Korean War veterans react as they shout slogans to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un during a parade to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of a truce in the 1950-1953 Korean War at Kim Il-sung Square, in Pyongyang July 27, 2013.
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About 28,500 US troops are in South Korea to help deter potential aggression from North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with armistice, not a peace treaty.
