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SEOUL — South Korea and the United States need efforts to resume dialogue with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) instead of being engrossed in war games that escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia. Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) computer-simulated exercises kicked off on Monday, mobilising tens of thousands of combined forces of the two allies. It is scheduled to run through next Friday, mounting the already-heightened tensions in the region further until the exercises end.
Seoul and Washington claim that their drills are defensive in nature, but this year’s exercises allegedly adopt a so-called Operation Plan 5015, a wartime joint response scenario signed in June last year between the two countries.
The OPLAN 5015 involves a US-South Korea preemptive strike against the DPRK, contradicting their claim to the defensiveness by themselves. Rather, the drills are aggressive, only to raise possibility for military conflicts on the peninsula.
Strong backlashes came from Pyongyang, which said it would “foil all hostile acts and threat of aggression and provocation with the Korean-style nuclear deterrence.” The DPRK sees the US-South Korea annual war games as a dress rehearsal for northward invasion. – Xinhua
Online Reporter