South Korea-US war games stack up tensions in Korean peninsula, region
BEIJING: As South Korea determines to host a highly controversial anti-missile system and joins the US in a largestever ongoing military exercises, elements of insecurity on the Korean Peninsula and the wider region are being further stacked up, reports China’s Xinhua news agency.
Kicked off on Wednesday, the two-month-long annual war games are reportedly mobilising US troops and strategic assets at an unprecedented level, and are put under simulated conditions of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (THAAD) deployment.
According to Xinhua contrary to their claim that the manoeuvres were intended to stabilise the situation, Seoul and Washington are exposing the region to greater danger.
Responding to the provoking war games, North Korea, the designated target of the THAAD system, has threatened to take ‘the toughest counteractions.’
Again, violence incites violence and saber rattling only adds to uncertainty and insecurity.
As has been proved many times through the previous joint drills, flexing muscles can never solve the problem, but complicate and exacerbate it.
Xinhua said that South Korea’s deliberate and reckless moves also irritate its neighbours whose strategic security interests have been severely undermined.
Although Seoul and Washington argue that the range of a THAAD battery is “very limited,” its radar is in fact physically capable of observing deep within the territory of regional countries including China and Russia.
In response, China has vowed to take necessary measures to safeguard its security interests, and Russia is ready to work with China to intensify their coordinated opposition to the deployment.
“It is like being stabbed by your friends,” a former senior Chinese diplomat said.
Negative sentiment is already spreading among ordinary Chinese people. Many have voluntarily initiated a boycott of South Korean products, especially those from Lotte group after it approved a land swap to station the THAAD system.