{"id":10009,"date":"2011-08-16T03:08:27","date_gmt":"2011-08-16T03:08:27","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-08-16T03:08:27","modified_gmt":"2011-08-16T03:08:27","slug":"N-Korea-warns-of-war-as-US-S-Korea-exercises-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?p=10009","title":{"rendered":"N.Korea warns of war as US-S.Korea exercises begin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>South Korea and the United States launched a massive joint military exercise today, prompting the North to condemn the maneuvers as provocative and warn that &#8220;all-out war&#8221; could accidentally erupt.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>The two allies have described the 10-day Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise as defensive and routine<\/strong> but the North habitually terms such joint drills a rehearsal for invasion and launches its own counter-exercises.<\/p>\n<p>All of CFC&#8217;s major units are taking part, involving more than 530,000 troops, including some 3,000 military personnel from the United States and other bases around the Pacific region, CFC said.<\/p>\n<p>US General James D. Thurman, Combined Forces Command Commander, said the drill was focused on &#8220;preparing, preventing and prevailing against the full range of current and future external threats&#8221; to South Korea and the region.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Pyongyang condemned the exercise as &#8220;extremely provocative&#8221;<\/strong>, calling it a preparation for an &#8220;all-out war&#8221; against the North and the &#8220;largest-ever nuclear war exercise&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Seoul and Washington wanted to use the latest exercises to build up their capability to mount surprise attacks on the North&#8217;s nuclear and missile facilities, it said.<\/p>\n<p>It accused the United States of seeking to bring war to the Korean peninsula after Afghanistan and Iraq as a way to &#8220;extricate itself from its worsening economic crisis&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The CFC spokesman said that during the exercise, troops would train for a &#8220;wide variety of missions including those involving the location and security of chemical, biological, nuclear and radiological threats&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The North&#8217;s military urged Seoul and Washington last week to show their willingness to work towards denuclearization by scrapping the exercise.<\/p>\n<p>In an open letter published by its official news media, Pyongyang also called for a peace-keeping mechanism to replace the current armistice that ended the 1950-1953 war.<\/p>\n<p>A flurry of diplomatic efforts have been under way to resume stalled six-party disarmament talks <strong>involving the two Koreas, Russia, China, Japan and the United States.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Senior Pyongyang officials met their counterparts in Seoul and Washington last month, raising hopes that the talks &#8212; last held in December 2008 &#8212; could resume.<\/p>\n<p>The North has repeatedly expressed a desire to return to the forum, but the United States has urged it to show more sincerity and mend ties with the South first.<\/p>\n<p><em>Source AFP<\/em><br \/>\n<!--break--><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>South Korea and the United States launched a massive joint military exercise today, prompting the North to condemn the maneuvers<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":72448,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10009","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"magazineBlocksPostFeaturedMedia":{"thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","medium_large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","1536x1536":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","2048x2048":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-highlighted-post":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-medium":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-featured-post-small":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x90.jpg","colormag-featured-image":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-default-news":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg","colormag-featured-image-large":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-block-extra-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-small-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg","colormag-elementor-grid-medium-large-thumbnail":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg"},"magazineBlocksPostAuthor":{"name":"Admin","avatar":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g"},"magazineBlocksPostCommentsNumber":"0","magazineBlocksPostExcerpt":"South Korea and the United States launched a massive joint military exercise today, prompting the North to condemn the maneuvers","magazineBlocksPostCategories":[],"magazineBlocksPostViewCount":140,"magazineBlocksPostReadTime":2,"magazine_blocks_featured_image_url":{"full":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"medium":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u.jpg",113,170,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/u-113x150.jpg",113,150,true]},"magazine_blocks_author":{"display_name":"Admin","author_link":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/?author=1"},"magazine_blocks_comment":0,"magazine_blocks_author_image":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/53e6cdc30765aade0129f85e5aeb50124b1d3f5bb9a70373be31e4eb328371e0?s=96&d=mm&r=g","magazine_blocks_category":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10009","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10009"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10009\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/72448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10009"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10009"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asiancemagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10009"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}