SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA (AP) – North Korea threatened yesterday to take “unprecedently” strong action against its rivals, soon after South Korea announced a series of planned military drills with the United States (US) to hone their joint response to the North’s increasing nuclear threats.
North Korea has halted weapons testing activities since its short-range missile firing on January 1, though it launched more than 70 missiles in 2022 – a record number for a single year. Yesterday’s warning suggests the North’s testing could resume soon over its rivals’ military training, which it views as an invasion rehearsal.
“In case the US and South Korea carry into practice their already announced plan for military drills that North Korea, with just apprehension and reason, regards as preparations for an aggression war, they will face unprecedentedly persistent and strong counteractions,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media.
The statement accused South Korea and the US of planning more than 20 rounds of military drills, including their largest-ever field exercises. It called South Korea and the US “the arch-criminals deliberately disrupting” regional peace and stability.
“This predicts that the situation in the Korean Peninsula and the region will be again plunged into the grave vortex of escalating tension,” the statement said.
It didn’t specify which US-South Korean military trainings it was referring to. But North Korea has typically slammed all major regular military drills between Washington and Seoul as a practice to launch an invasion and responded with its own weapons tests.
Some experts said North Korea has used various South Korea-US drills as a chance to test and perfect its weapons systems. They said North Korea would eventually aim to use its enlarged nuclear arsenal to win international recognition as a legitimate nuclear state and win sanctions relief and other concessions.
Seoul and Washington have said their training is defensive in nature.
Yesterday, South Korea’s Deputy Minister Of National Defence Policy Heo Tae-keun told lawmakers that Seoul and Washington will hold an annual computer-simulated combined training in mid-March.
Heo said the 11-day training would reflect North Korea’s nuclear threats, as well as unspecified lessons from the situation in Ukraine.
Heo said the two countries will also conduct joint field exercises in mid-March that would be bigger than those held in the past few years. The allies had downsized or cancelled some of their regular drills in recent years to guard against the COVID-19 pandemic and support now-dormant diplomacy on North Korea’s nuclear programme.
