North Korea threatens unprecedented response to US and South exercises

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Friday threatened to take “unprecedented” decisive action against its rivals shortly after South Korea announced a series of planned military exercises with the United States to hone their joint response to the growing nuclear threat from the North.

North Korea has halted weapons testing since launching short-range missiles on January 1, although it fired more than 70 missiles in 2022, a record number in a single year. Friday’s warning suggests the North’s testing may soon resume due to military exercises by its rivals, which it sees as a rehearsal for an invasion.

“In the event that the United States and South Korea implement their already announced plan for military exercises, which (North Korea) regards with full apprehension and justification as preparation for an aggressive war, they will face unprecedented persistent and strong opposition,” the message says. DPRK. This is stated in the message of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Korea, distributed by state media.

The statement accused South Korea and the United States of planning more than 20 rounds of military exercises, including their largest ever field exercise. He called South Korea and the United States “the main perpetrators of intentionally disrupting” regional peace and stability.

“This predicts that the situation on the Korean peninsula and the region will once again plunge into the maelstrom of escalating tensions,” the statement said.

What kind of US-South Korean military exercises in question is not specified. But North Korea has generally denounced all major regular military exercises between Washington and Seoul as an invasion practice, and has responded by conducting its own weapons tests.

Some experts say North Korea has used various South Korean-American exercises as an opportunity to test and improve its weapons systems. They say North Korea will eventually seek to use its expanded nuclear arsenal to secure international recognition as a legitimate nuclear power and secure sanctions relief and other concessions.

Seoul and Washington said their training was defensive in nature.

Earlier Friday, South Korea’s Deputy National Defense Policy Minister Ho Tae Geun told lawmakers that Seoul and Washington would hold an annual joint computer exercise in mid-March. Ho said the 11-day exercise would reflect North Korea’s nuclear threats as well as unspecified lessons from the Russian-Ukrainian war.

He said the two countries will also hold joint field exercises in mid-March, which will be larger than those that have been held in the past few years.

Allies have scaled back or canceled some of their regular exercises in recent years to guard against the COVID-19 pandemic and bolster the now dormant diplomacy over North Korea’s nuclear program.

Earlier Friday, Seoul officials said South Korea and the US would hold a one-day command post exercise next week at the Pentagon in Arlington, Va., to hone the response to a potential North Korean nuclear use. The exercise, scheduled for Wednesday, will identify possible scenarios for the use of nuclear weapons by North Korea, explore ways to combat them militarily, and formulate crisis management plans, the South Korean defense ministry said in a statement.

Seoul’s concerns about North Korea’s nuclear program intensified after Pyongyang passed a law last year allowing the preemptive use of nuclear weapons and tested nuclear-tipped missiles that put South Korea within reach.

In response to rising threats from North Korea, South Korea and the US have expanded their joint military exercises and increased pressure on the North to abandon its nuclear program. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in January that the US would also increase the deployment of advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula.

During their annual meeting in November, Austin and South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-sop agreed to conduct an annual tabletop exercise and further strengthen the alliance’s information sharing, joint planning and execution. Austin repeated the warning that any nuclear attack against the United States or its allies would bring down the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.