NKorea vows ‘merciless retaliation’

As North Korea vowed “merciless retaliation” against U.S.-South Korean military drills that it claims are an invasion rehearsal, senior U.S. military commanders on Tuesday dismissed calls to pause or downsize exercises they called crucial to countering a clear threat from Pyongyang.

The heated North Korean rhetoric, along with occasional weapons tests, is standard fare during the spring and summer war games by allies Seoul and Washington, but always uneasy ties between the Koreas are worse than normal this year following weeks of titfor-tat threats between President Donald Trump and Pyongyang in the wake of the North’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month.

There have been calls in both the United States and South Korea to postpone or modify the Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday in an attempt to ease hostility on the Korean Peninsula following North Korea’s threat to lob missiles toward the U.S. territory of Guam.

But a visiting group of senior U.S. military commanders, including Adm. Harry Harris, the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, said the drills are critical for the allies to maintain readiness against an aggressive North Korea.

“A strong diplomatic effort backed by a strong military effort is key because credible combat power should be in support of diplomacy and not the other way around,” Harris said during a news conference at the Osan Air Base in South Korea.

Vincent Brooks, commander of U.S. Forces Korea, said the allies should continue the war games until they “have reason not to.” ‘’That reason has not yet emerged,” he said.

The U.S. military officials later traveled to the site of a contentious U.S. missile-defense system in South Korea later Tuesday.

North Korea’s military said in a statement that it would launch an unspecified “merciless retaliation and unsparing punishment” on the United States.

Impoverished North Korea hates the annual US-South Korea military exercises in part because they force it to respond with expensive military measures of its own.

The North Korean statement accused the United States of deploying unspecified “lethal” weapons for the drills that it says involve a “beheading operation” training aimed at removing absolute ruler Kim Jong Un.

“No one can vouch that these huge forces concentrated in South Korea will not go over to an actual war action now that the military tensions have reached an extreme pitch in the Korean Peninsula,” the statement said.

“Moreover, high-ranking bosses of the U.S. imperialist aggressor forces flew into South Korea to hold a war confab. Such huddle is increasing the gravity of the situation.”