* Tensions run high in Asia as South Korea, US begin annual military drills*
North Korea
threatened Monday to launch a nuclear first-strike and turn Seoul and
Washington, D.C., into "a heap of ashes" — a threat that comes on the
heels of China using its military to signal that it, too, would go to war to
enforce its territorial claims.
While
Pyongyang’s threat isn't new, it comes as South Korea and the U.S. begin joint
military exercises amid the defection of a senior North Korean diplomat and a
U.S. plan to place a defense missile system in South Korea.
Tension in the
region already was heightened after China last week flashed its newest
offensive weapons during war games in the Sea of Japan, exercises that put on
display Beijing's latest-generation frigate and long-range bombers as a warning
to its neighbors —and the U.S. — that if is not ready to negotiate its
territorial claims.
China has
grown increasingly assertive over its claim to a chain of uninhabited islands
controlled by Japan, recently dispatching more than a dozen coast guard vessels
as Chinese fishing vessels swarmed the surrounding waters.
South Korea
and the U.S., meanwhile, began their joint exercise despite Pyongyang’s fiery
rhetoric, which claimed the North's "first-strike" units were ready
to mount retaliatory attacks on South Korean and U.S. forces involved in the
drills.
South Korea
expressed “strong” regret over Pyongyang’s warning, saying the drills with the
U.S. are purely defensive in nature. Seoul and Washington have repeatedly said
they have no intentions of invading Pyongyang.
This year’s
Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for a 12-day run are largely
computer-simulated war games. The training involves 25,000 American troops and
50,000 South Korea soldiers, according to the U.S. and South Korean militaries.
It comes days after Seoul announced that Thae Yong Ho, No. 2 at the North's
embassy in London, had recently defected to South Korea because he was
disillusioned with the North's leadership. Pyongyang's state media called him
"human scum" and a criminal who had been ordered home for a series of
alleged criminal acts, including sexually assaulting a minor.
Source: Fox news
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