S Korea, US begin drills as North threatens war

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) – North and South Korea staged dueling war games Monday as threatening rhetoric from the rivals rose to the highest level since North Korea rained artillery shells on a South Korean island in 2010.

Enraged over the South’s joint military drills with the United States and recent UN sanctions, Pyongyang has piled threat on top of threat, including vows to launch a nuclear strike on the US and to scrap the nearly 60-year-old armistice that ended the Korean War. Seoul has responded with tough talk of its own and has placed its troops on high alert.

Anti-war activists hold a placard showing the Korean Peninsula inside a bomb during a protest against a joint military exercise between South Korea and the US on March 11. AFP

North Korea’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, reported that the armistice was nullified Monday as Pyongyang had previously announced. The North followed through on another promise Monday, shutting down a Red Cross hotline that the North and South used for general communication and to discuss aid shipments and separated families’ reunions.

The 11-day military drills that started Monday involve 10,000 South Korean and about 3,000 American troops. Those coincide with two months of separate US-South Korean field exercises that began March 1.

Also continuing are large-scale North Korean drills that Seoul says involve the army, navy and air force. The South Korean defence ministry said there have been no military activities it considers suspicious.