SEOUL– North Korea warned Tuesday that it could stage “more powerful follow-up measures” if the United States continues “military provocations,” citing its large-scale combined air exercise with South Korea.
A spokesman at the North’s foreign ministry denounced the ongoing combined air drills by the allies, called Vigilant Storm, as “ceaseless and reckless” military provocations.
The exercise is “a war drill for aggression mainly aimed at striking the strategic targets of the DPRK in case of contingency in the Korean Peninsula,” the unnamed spokesman said in an English language statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency.
DPRK is the acronym of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
The allies on Monday kicked off their first massive joint air drills in nearly five years, with more than 240 aircraft, including stealth jets, mobilized, over the skies of the peninsula amid growing speculation that Pyongyang may conduct a nuclear test soon. The exercise is to run through Friday.
The North’s official warned that Pyongyang is “ready to take all necessary measures for defending its sovereignty, people’s security and territorial integrity from outside military threats.”
“If the U.S. continuously persists in the grave military provocations, the DPRK will take into account more powerful follow-up measures,” the spokesman said.
North Korea has long denounced joint military drills between Seoul and Washington as a rehearsal for invasion, calling on Washington to end its “hostile” policy. The allies stress that the exercises are defensive in nature.
South Korea’s unification ministry said North Korea itself is to blame for the latest flare-up in tensions on the peninsula attributable to its “reckless” development of nuclear and missile weapons.
“The government will maintain a firm deterrence posture to protect our nationals’ lives and safety,” a ministry official told reporters on the customary condition of anonymity.
The North should stop provocations and accept the South’s “audacious initiative” aimed at supporting its economic development in return for denuclearization steps.
The five-day combined air drills came after a series of provocations by Pyongyang in recent weeks, including its firing of two short-range ballistic missiles into the East Sea on Friday and the latest launches of artillery shells.
The previous day, four F-35B stealth fighters of the U.S. Marine Fighter Attack Squadron 242, based in Iwakuni, Japan, arrived at Kunsan Air Base in the city, 179 kilometers south of Seoul, to take part in the training, the U.S. 7th Air Force said.
“As a part of the Pacific Air Forces command’s annual combined and joint fighter training event, the fifth-generation aircraft shared Korean air space with aircraft and personnel from the 8th Fighter Wing, ROK Air Force’s 38th Fighter Group and multiple other units from across the Indo-Pacific Command,” it said in a statement posted on its website. ROK stands for the South’s official name, the Republic of Korea.
Differentiating itself from the F-35A variant, the F-35B is capable of taking off and landing vertically for mobilization from various environments, such as aircraft carriers.
For this week’s drills, the U.S. is deploying some 100 assets, including EA-18 electronic warfare aircraft, KC-135 tankers and U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, while the South is mobilizing some 140 planes, including F-35A stealth jets, and F-15K and KF-16 fighters.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Defense said that one of its nuclear-powered submarines, USS Key West, arrived in the country earlier this week for a scheduled visit, in an apparent show of force as the allies seek to bolster deterrence against the North.
The Los Angeles-class fast attack submarine entered the southern port of Busan, 453 km south of Seoul, the previous day as part of its deployment to the Indo-Pacific region, according to a post on the Pentagon’s Defense Visual Information Distribution Service.
Key West is one of five U.S. submarines forward deployed to Guam and has vertical launch capability of Tomahawk missiles, according to the U.S. military.
Source: Yonhap News Agency