A May 16 report in the Asahi Shimbun newspaper noted that South Korea “had consistently avoided policy measures that would provoke China, but after careful consideration made the decision to strengthen cooperation with Japan and the USA to oppose the immediate [North Korean] threat”.
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The government has sent several text messages and emails to missionary groups and travelers asking them to stay away from the border region because the North could attack or kidnap South Koreans after 13 North Korean workers defected from a restaurant in the province in April.
A ballistic missile can travel up to 3,000 kilometers.
South Korea, Japan and the United States will hold their first anti-missile drills together next month to guard against threats from nuclear-armed North Korea, a Seoul official said Monday.
Its proposal to South Korea to discuss deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system with USFK came just before North Korea’s long-range rocket launch on February 7, while the proposal to hold the trilateral missile defense exercises came two days later on February 9.
The global standoff over North Korea has recently deepened after Pyongyang carried out its fourth nuclear test in January and a long-range rocket launch in February.
The three countries will practice “detecting and tracing a hypothetical North Korean missile”, said a ministry official. The three countries have held joint search-and-rescue drills in the past.
“That’s phenomenal. nearly unprecedented”, said retired Army Gen. Spider Marks, a former top American military intelligence officer in South Korea.
North Korea has tested several weapons systems so far this year: a nuclear device, a three-stage rocket, a submarine-launched missile, a mobile-launched missile, and a new long-range rocket engine.
Local historians and the surviving victims, however, believe tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of South Korean women had been forced into sexual slavery during Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.
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More than 60 years after the end of the Korean War, every South Korean man between the age of 18 and 35 is required to perform two years’ military service.
