SEOUL, South Korea, 17 Feb: North Korea threatened Friday to take \u201cunprecedently\u201d strong action against its rivals, soon after South Korea announced a series of planned military drills with the United States to hone their joint response to the North\u2019s increasing nuclear threats.
\nNorth Korea has halted weapons testing activities since its short-range missile firing on Jan. 1, though it launched more than 70 missiles in 2022 \u2014 a record number for a single year. Friday\u2019s warning suggests the North\u2019s testing could resume soon over its rivals\u2019 military training, which it views as an invasion rehearsal.
\n\u201cIn case the U.S. 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,\u201d the North Korean Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by state media.
\nThe statement accused South Korea and the United States of planning more than 20 rounds of military drills, including their largest-ever field exercises. It called South Korea and the United States \u201cthe arch-criminals deliberately disrupting\u201d regional peace and stability.
\n\u201cThis predicts that the situation in the Korean Peninsula and the region will be again plunged into the grave vortex of escalating tension,\u201d the statement said.
\nIt didn\u2019t specify which U.S.-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.
\nSome experts say North Korea has used various South Korea-U.S. drills as a chance to test and perfect its weapons systems. They say 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.
\nSeoul and Washington have said their training is defensive in nature.
\nEarlier Friday, Heo Tae-keun, South Korea\u2019s deputy minister of national defense policy, 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\u2019s nuclear threats, as well as unspecified lessons from the Russia-Ukraine War.
\nHeo 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. AP<\/p>\n
The allies had downsized or canceled some of their regular drills in recent years to guard against the COVID-19 pandemic and support now-dormant diplomacy on North Korea\u2019s nuclear program.
\nEarlier Friday, Seoul officials said that South Korea and the U.S. will hold a one-day tabletop exercise next week at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, to sharpen a response to a potential use of nuclear weapons by North Korea. The exercise, scheduled for Wednesday, would set up possible scenarios where North Korea uses nuclear weapons, explore how to cope with them militarily and formulate crisis management plans, South Korea\u2019s Defense Ministry said in a statement.
\nSeoul\u2019s security concerns about North Korea\u2019s nuclear program deepened after Pyongyang last year adopted a law that authorizes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons, and tested nuclear-capable missiles that put South Korea within striking distance.
\nIn response to the intensifying North Korean threats, South Korea and the United States have expanded their joint military drills and stepped up pressure on the North to abandon its nuclear program. In January, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that the U.S. would also increase its deployment of advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula.
\nDuring their annual meeting in November, Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-Sup agreed to conduct tabletop exercises annually and further strengthen the alliance\u2019s information sharing, joint planning and execution. Austin reiterated a warning that any nuclear attack against the U.S. or its allies would result in the end of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un\u2019s regime. AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL, South Korea, 17 Feb: North Korea threatened Friday to take \u201cunprecedently\u201d strong action against its rivals, soon after South Korea announced a series of planned military drills with the United States to hone their joint response to the North\u2019s increasing nuclear threats. North Korea has halted weapons testing activities since its short-range missile firing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-211219","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211219","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=211219"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/211219\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=211219"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=211219"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=211219"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}