Some 25,000 USA troops are participating in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercise, which runs through September the 2.
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The military drills involve around 25,000 U.S. military personnel, of which 2,500 will come from outside South Korea, operating alongside 75,000 South Korean troops.
North Korea has been blamed for planting landmines along the DMZ that detonated past year, maiming two South Korean soldiers patrolling the border.
“It is regrettable that North Korea threatens to conduct a pre-emptive nuclear attack on the South”, responded South Korean unification ministry spokesman Jeong Joon-hee – a rather mild retort, given what the North Koreans are threatening to do, although the frequency of their nuclear threats probably creates a certain degree of tired resignation in South Korean officials.
Seoul’s super-hardline policy got to the apex in July by agreeing with Washington to deploy one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in southeastern South Korea by the end of next year.
President Park Geun-hye’s administration in Seoul had been equivocating on whether to host a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) antimissile unit for the US military, fearful of angering Beijing.
In response to this defection, North Korea called Thae “human scum” who ran to escape punishments for criminal activities.
“Recently, the elite in the North is even collapsing and high-profile figures are increasingly escaping their homeland and defecting to foreign countries”.
South Korea and the United States need efforts to resume dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) instead of being engrossed in war games that escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.
During a National Security Council meeting at Cheong Wa Dae (Blue House), President Park said, “There are growing possibilities over all sorts of terrorist attacks and provocations targeting us, including cyber terrorism, as North Korea tries to battle internal upheaval, to prevent any further defections, and to stir up chaos in our society”.
Last week, South Korea announced that Mr Thae Yong Ho, the North’s deputy ambassador in London, had defected and arrived in the South with his family, in an embarrassing blow to the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. North Korea is unlikely to launch a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies, a move that would invite its own destruction. The North Korean leadership, they say, is brimming with confidence, secure in the knowledge they have not only the missiles but also the bomb.
The United States keeps 28,500 troops based in neighboring South Korea as a deterrent force, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended without a formal peace treaty.
“A new round of sanctions on North Korea went into effect this spring”, she notes.
South Korean experts have presumed that the North has approximately 40 kilograms of weapon-grade plutonium.
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That defection, of Pyongyang’s deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom, caused North Korea to issue a statement calling the diplomat a criminal, with South Korean officials expressing concerns that North Korea might dispatch assassination squads to eliminate potential defectors overseas.
