Pyongyang blasts S. Korea for holding military drill with US

SEOUL:NorthKoreablastedSouth Korea yesterday for conducting joint air force exercises with the US, calling the maneuvers an act of ‘perfidy’ endangering interKorean relations, even though the drills were scaled back from previous years, Yonhap news agency reported.

In a statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency, the North’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Country also urged Seoul to ‘behave with discretion’, while warning that there could be a ‘response from our army’.

It marked the first time that the North lashed out at South Korea in a statement by the committee handling inter-Korean affairs since early last year when the two Koreas resumed talks and exchanges after years of frozen relations.

“The acts of perfidy... have greatly disappointed us, as they, far from trying to keep to preserve the valuable spark of peace, reconciliation and cooperation, have gone against the trend towards the reconciliation on the peninsula which the North and the South nurtured by their joint efforts for the past one year,” the statement said.

“The South Korean authorities have to behave with discretion, mindful that their open perfidy to the DPRK (North Korea) at the crucial moment of whether to preserve the atmosphere of the improvement of the north-south ties may put the overall bilateral ties at risk,” it added.

On Monday, South Korea and the US launched a two-week joint aerial military drill around the Korean Peninsula.

It is a scaled-back exercise of the massive Max Thunder drill.

“While staging the large-scale combined aerial drill, the South Korean authorities claim that Max Thunder was thrown into the history and they reduced the scope of the drill by taking into consideration the situation on the Korean Peninsula,” the statement said.

“They are seriously mistaken if they think they can give relief to us and stay clear of the public criticism at home and abroad with such trite nonsense,” it added.