About 25,000 USA troops are joining in the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which runs until Sept 2.
Advertisement
“The presence of any device or munition on or near the bridge seriously jeopardizes the safety” of people near the border, the U.N. Command said in a statement.
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have worsened in recent months, with North Korea enduring harsh United Nations sanctions over a series of tests of its nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.
Over the weekend, the South Korean government warned the public that it is probable that DPRK may carry out some provocations during or after the military drills, especially because the exercise was coincidentally held after news of a North Korean official’s defection last week. North Korea frequently makes such threats.
Local news agency Yonhap also quoted an unnamed government source as saying that several landmines reportedly laid by North Korea’s military were spotted last week in what “appears to be created to prevent its front-line servicemen from defecting”.
“The nuclear warmongers should bear in mind that if they show the slightest sign of aggression, it would turn the stronghold of provocation into a heap of ashes through a Korean-style preemptive nuclear strike”.
The U.S. -led command would not speculate on why North Korea is taking such action, but South Korea’s Yonhap news agency says it was told by a government source that the mines are there to prevent front-line North Korean troops from defecting.
Last week, Seoul confirmed that the second-in-command at Pyongyang’s embassy in Britain, Thae Yong-ho, was now being offered protection in South Korea along with his immediate family.
Tension has been inflamed in recent days by the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat to the South in an embarrassing blow to the North.
Buses transporting South Korean participants for a reunion travel on the road leading to North Korea’s Mount Kumgang resort, in the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas in this picture taken from the Unification Observatory, just south of the DMZ in Goseong, South Korea, October 20, 2015.
Advertisement
North Korean soldiers have been spotted planting anti-personnel mines on its side of the so-called Bridge of No Return, a river crossing near the border truce village of Panmunjom.
