Keyboard warriors in war games

>> SEOUL: In air-conditioned bunkers and at military bases across South Korea, it is with keyboards — not tanks — that South Korean and the US forces will launch military exercises on Monday, denounced by North Korea as a rehearsal for war.

The Aug 21 to Aug 31 exercises involve computer simulations designed to prepare for the unthinkable: war with nuclear-capable North Korea.

The wargames, details of which are a closely guarded secret, simulate military conflict with the isolated country. The US describes them as “defensive in nature”, a term North Korean state media has dismissed as a “deceptive mask”.

“The drills deal with all the steps involved in a war, of course, towards victory,” said Moon Seong-mook, a retired South Korean brigadier who regularly participated in the drills until the mid-2000s.

Far from the dusty firing ranges just south of the heavily fortified border with North Korea, US and South Korean troops hunch over laptops and screens wearing earphones and camouflaged combat uniforms, according to photos of past Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) drills on the United States Forces Korea website.

The US military describes the software behind the drills as “state-of-the-art wargaming computer simulations”. There will be no field training during the exercise, according to US Forces Korea.

As part of the exercises, imagery from military satellites orbiting above the Korean peninsula, is at times used to peer deep into North Korea, said a former South Korean government official who declined to be identified.

Banks of monitors and computer graphics create simulated battlefields, complete with troop movements, according to Park Yong-han, a military expert formerly with the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analysis. “You can expand a certain area to see what troops are in what sort of status and where they will move,” said Mr Park.

That focus on the North Korean leadership is what particularly infuriates Pyongyang, experts say.

North Korea’s rapid progress in developing nuclear weapons and missiles capable of reaching the US mainland has fuelled a surge in tension.

US President Donald Trump warned that North Korea would face “fire and fury” if it threatened the United States. The North responded by threatening to fire missiles towards the US Pacific island of Guam.

The North later said it was holding off firing towards Guam, while it waited to see what the United States would do next.

The UFG joint drills have their roots in a 1968 raid on South Korea’s Blue House presidential complex, when Unit 124 of the North Korean army secretly entered South Korea and unsuccessfully attempted to assassinate the then-president, Park Chung-hee.

The United States has about 28,000 troops in South Korea.

North and South Korea are still technically at war with the North after the Korean War ended with a truce, not a peace treaty.