The United States and South Korea began the first stage of their regularly scheduled joint military exercise on Monday. This was followed by North Korea’s regularly scheduled threat of nuclear war if the drills proceed as planned.
“The joint exercise is the most explicit expression of hostility against us, and no one can guarantee that the exercise won’t evolve into actual fighting,” warned North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun news service.
Pyongyang went on to describe the exercise as “pouring gasoline on a fire,” and denounced it as “reckless behaviour driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war.”
“If the United States is lost in a fantasy that war on the peninsula is at somebody else’s doorstep far away from them across the Pacific, it is far more mistaken than ever,” North Korean media declared.
Rodong Sinmun had plenty of bile left over for the South Koreans, who were denounced as “puppet military warmongers,” and Australia, which faces inescapable “counter-measures of justice by the DPRK” for daring to join the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise.
North Korea’s KCNA news agency said the U.S. and South Korea want to “ignite a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula at any cost.”
“The situation on the Korean peninsula has plunged into a critical phase due to the reckless north-targeted war racket of the war maniacs,” KCNA snarled.
Analysts will no doubt wonder if these belligerent statements indicate relations between North Korea and the civilized world are taking a turn for the worse, following a brief period of optimism when dictator Kim Jong-un decided to call off a threatened missile strike against Guam. Rodong Sinmun offers assurances that lobbing missiles at Guam is still on the table.
Sky News reports there has been a “sense of intensification” in the anti-American rhetoric fed to North Koreans over the past few months, including extra patrols by trucks blasting anti-U.S. tirades through loudspeakers, and newspaper headlines declaring the entire population of the country is “boiling with hatred” for America.
A curious detail mentioned by Sky News is that North Korean media has yet to publish a single picture of U.S. President Donald Trump.
As it happens, the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise is largely computer-simulated, so there might not be many physical maneuvers the North Koreans could denounce as provocative. However, the possibility of overflights by aircraft such as the B-1B bomber, which North Korea loathes, has not been ruled out according to a New York Times report on Monday.
Both U.S. and South Korean officials insisted the drills are harmless and focused entirely on responding to a North Korean attack.
“The Ulchi exercise is a defensive drill conducted annually. We have no intention at all to raise tensions on the Korean Peninsula,” South Korean President Moon Jae-in said in an address to his cabinet on Monday.
“North Korea must understand that it is because of its repeated provocations that South Korea and the U.S. have to conduct defensive exercises, which in turn keeps the vicious cycle going,” Moon added.
A spokesman for President Moon said that his offer to resume talks with North Korea is still open, and Pyongyang can “enjoy a brighter future with the cooperation of the international community” if it “chooses the right path.”
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