Subject:  South Korea + US Exercises |
Author:
OSD
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Date Posted: 11/27/10 10:15:47
USS GEORGE WASHINGTON + ESCORT SHIPS
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South Korea and the United States were set to launch large-scale naval exercises Sunday in another potent show of force against North Korea, five days after the North bombarded a southern island and warned it could follow up with more attacks.
The nuclear-powered USS George Washington, with more than 6,000 sailors and 75 fighter jets aboard, prepared for the naval drills with South Korea in the Yellow Sea.
The drills are set to run through Wednesday, and about 10 warships have been mobilized for the exercises.
North Korea has bristled at the exercises, and its last-remaining ally China has also voiced concerns over the joint drills that will take place close to its territory, claiming that they will only heighten tension in the region.
The North's attack Tuesday on Yeonpyeong Island killed two marines and two civilians. The deadly shelling drew international condemnation and angered South Koreans, who came under the communist neighbor's first attack targeting civilians since the 1950-53 Korean War.
Although this week's exercises were planned before the North's strike on Yeonpyeong, Seoul and Washington announced the date of the drills a day after the attack from Pyongyang.
Calling the drills "defensive in nature," the U.S. Forces Korea said in a statement that they "demonstrate the strength of the ROK-U.S. alliance and our commitment to regional stability through deterrence."
As the allies pushed for the drills, North Korea ratcheted up its verbal rhetoric, accusing South Korea and the U.S. of staging the joint drill to rehearse an attack on Pyongyang.
"The situation on the Korean Peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements to stage again the war exercises targeted against the DPRK," the North's Korean Central News Agency said in a report Friday, using the acronym of the country's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.
The drills will take place off the west coast town of Taean, far south of the tense Yellow Sea border where Tuesday's attack took place and where the South Korean Cheonan corvette was sunk by a North Korean torpedo in March. Forty-six sailors were killed in that deadly incident.
Officials at the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said the participating ships have no plan to move northward near the sea border with North Korea, but they would hold "high-intensity" live-fire sea drills.
JCS officials said they are closely monitoring activities by North Korean military over mounting concerns of another provocation.
"North Korea's southwestern coastline long-range artillery batteries have maintained a ready-to-fire posture," said a JCS official on condition of anonymity. "We are closely watching movements of the North Korean military."
The nuclear-powered carrier belonging to the U.S. Seventh Fleet based in Yokosuka, Japan, has an operational range of 1,000 kilometers. Aircraft aboard the carrier include the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, the F/A-18A/C Hornet, the E-2C Hawkeye airborne early warning aircraft and the P3-C antisubmarine surveillance aircraft.
(Yonhap News)
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