SEOUL, March 21 (UPI) -- South Korea and the United States on Thursday launched their largest joint military exercises since the Korean War over the protest of North Korea, which termed the exercises a declaration of war.
Defense officials in Seoul said the military exercises are purely defensive, designed to evaluate coordination, procedures and systems being used by U.S. and South Korean forces.
North Korea blasted the drills as preparations for invasion. A North Korean Foreign Ministry statement claimed the exercises were part of "very dangerous war gambles to seize the chance to provoke a nuclear war" targeting the North.
The drills are "a declaration of war," the ministry added, and the North would "wipe out the aggressors to the last one" if war broke out.
The weeklong exercises merge for the first time two annual joint military maneuvers, a drill called Reception, Staging and Onward Movement Integration and an outdoor field maneuver code-named Foal Eagle. The purpose of the dual maneuvers was training efficiency, said Lee Ferguson, a spokeswoman for the U.S. military command in Seoul.
The war games, which will continue through next Wednesday, will be the biggest since the 1950-53 Korean War, Ferguson said. Exercises involve the 37,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and parts of U.S. forces from bases around the Pacific region as well as 650,000 South Korean soldiers. Most of the exercises will be computer simulations under the supervision of the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command.
The exercises come amid growing signs of tension on the Korean peninsula due largely to a stalemate in ties between the United States and North Korea. U.S. President George Bush dubbed the Pyongyang government part of "an axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq in his January State of the Union address.
To lessen tensions, the U.S.-led U.N. command offered to meet with North Korean military officials to formally notify Pyongyang of the purpose of the military exercises. North Korean officials declined to meet with them, however.
A senior adviser on North Korea to the South's President Kim Dae-jung this week warned the peninsula could face a security crisis next year if North Korea and the United States fail to reach a breakthrough.
