During the weekend, U.S. and South Korean Navy ships carried out joint exercises off the coast of the Korean peninsula, which prompted North Korea to claim they were rehearsing for war. North Korea further threatened to sink the U.S. aircraft carrier, USS Ronald Reagan. The military drill was described by the U.S. as a routinely scheduled exercise in preparation for an undesired event: a North Korean attack on their southern neighbors.
“This exercise is an example of how we train with our allies in order to be ready to respond to a range of crises,” said Marc Dalton, commander of the Navy’s carrier strike group in the Pacific.
Dalton added that North Korea’s missile tests have emphasized the significance of Reagan’s crew mission in attaining peace and stability in the region. Other top officers noted the aim of these exercises is to be prepared and asserted they have nothing to do with the recent feud between President Donald Trump and King Jong-un.
The yearly exercise involved the USS Ronald Reagan, a U.S. destroyer, and South Korean ships and took place in the Sea of Japan. The drills, the U.S. military said, were simulations of noncombatant Americans’ evacuation.
North Korea, on the other hand, maintains the joint military drills are “vicious and ferocious in their scale and aim” and asked the UN Security Council to “eliminate the root cause of tension and war.”
The state-run Korean Central News Agency also published several editorials in which they claim that for the past year the U.S. has been attempting to cause war on the peninsula.
“The U.S. finally kicked off the ‘high-intensity joint drill’ against the DPRK in the waters off the Korean peninsula, together with the south Korean puppet forces. The warmongers’ saber-rattling being staged for nearly one year goes to clearly prove that they are working hard to ignite a war of aggression at any cost on the peninsula,” said one of the editorials.
The agency added that countries which support the U.S. in this matter have been blackmailed by “the boss of the international gangsters.”
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