China urges calm as Pyongyang says that war is now inevitable
Two American B-1B heavy bombers joined large-scale combat drills over South Korea yesterday amid warnings from North Korea that the exercises and US threats have made the outbreak of war “an established fact”.
The annual US-South Korean Vigilant Ace exercises feature 230 aircraft, including a range of the American military’s most advanced stealth warplanes.
They come a week after North Korea tested its most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile to date, which it says can reach the mainland United States. A spokesman for the North’s foreign ministry blamed the drills and “confrontational warmongering” by US officials for making war inevitable.
“The remaining question now is: when will the war break out?” the spokesman said on Wednesday in a statement carried by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency.
“We do not wish for a war but shall not hide from it,” he said.
China, North Korea’s neighbour and sole major ally, again urged calm and said war was not the answser.
“We hope all relevant parties can maintain calm and restraint and take steps to alleviate tensions and not provoke each other,” said Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang. “The outbreak of war is not in any side’s interest. The ones that will suffer the most are ordinary people.”
Tensions on the Korean peninsula have risen markedly in recent months after North Korea’s latest missile and nuclear tests, conducted in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions and international condemnation.
On Wednesday, a US B-1B bomber flew from the Pacific US-administered territory of Guam to join the exercises, which run until today.
The flights by the B-1B, one of America’s largest strike aircraft, have played a leading role in Washington’s attempts to increase pressure on North Korea to abandon its weapons programmes.
In September, B-1Bs were among a formation of US military aircraft that flew farther north up North Korea’s coast than at any time in the past 17 years, according to the US Pacific command.
That prompted North Korea’s foreign minister, Ri Yong-ho, to warn that the North could shoot down the US bombers even if they did not enter North Korean airspace.
“B1-B bombers have been regularly dispatched to the Korean peninsula over the past years;
however, it seems that the US air force might have enhanced its training to better prepare for actual warfare,” said Yang Uk, a senior fellow at the Korea Defence and Security Forum.
While B-1Bs are no longer equipped to carry nuclear weapons, they would be key to any strike targeting major North Korean facilities, he said. “That’s why North Korea has been making such a big deal when B1-B bombers are flying overhead.”
Both sides insist they do not want war, but blame each other for provocations. White House national security adviser HR McMaster said over the weekend that the possibility of war with North Korea was “increasing every day”.
US Republican senator Lindsey Graham urged the Pentagon on Sunday to start moving US military dependants, such as spouses and children, out of South Korea, saying conflict with North Korea was getting close. The Pentagon said that it has “no intent” to move any dependants out of the country.
The rising tensions coincide with a rare visit to the isolated North by UN political affairs chief Jeffrey Feltman this week, the highest-level UN official to visit North Korea since 2012.
Mr Feltman met North Korean foreign minister Ri Su-yong yesterday.