The United States, South Korea and Japan are conducting joint naval exercises involving an American aircraft carrier in a latest show of force against nuclear-armed North Korea, South Korea’s military said on Wednesday, as senior diplomats from the three countries met in Seoul to discuss the ongoing standoff. deepening with Pyongyang.
The exercise in the waters off South Korea’s Jeju island comes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues provocations in weapons tests and threats that have raised regional tensions to their highest level in years.
In Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp parliament this week, Kim declared that North Korea would abandon its long-standing commitment to peaceful unification with South Korea and ordered a rewrite of the North’s constitution to eliminate the idea of joint statehood between the war-torn nations.
His remarks on Monday came a day after the North conducted its first ballistic test in 2024, which state media described as a new solid-fueled intermediate-range missile with a hypersonic warhead, reflecting its push to advance its arsenal aimed at the US military. bases in Guam and Japan.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the trilateral naval exercise, which ended its three-day program on Wednesday, involved nine warships from the country, including the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and the Aegis destroyers from South Korea and Japan.
The exercise in the waters off South Korea’s Jeju island comes as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues provocations in weapons tests and threats that have raised regional tensions to their highest level in years. ZUMAPRESS.com South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the three-way naval exercise, which ended its three-day program on Wednesday, involved nine warships from the country, including the US aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and the Aegis destroyers from South Korea and Japan. AP
The exercise is aimed at sharpening the country’s combined deterrence and response capabilities against North Korea’s nuclear, missile and underwater threats, as well as training to prevent illegal transportation of weapons of mass destruction, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
It did not say whether the drills reflected concerns about North Korea’s alleged transfer of arms to Russia to aid the country’s war in Ukraine.
In Seoul, South Korea’s nuclear envoy Kim Gunn is scheduled to meet his Japanese counterpart Namazu Hiroyuki on Wednesday, a day before their three-way meeting with US President Joe Biden’s deputy special representative for North Korea, Jung Pak, to coordinate their response to the North.
In the face of North Korea’s growing nuclear threat, the conservative government of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has expanded cooperation and military exercises with the United States and Japan, which Kim has denounced as exercises of aggression.
The aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson leads a fleet of South Korean and Japanese destroyers in international waters off the southern coast of the Korean peninsula on January 17, 2024. AP
Yoon has also sought stronger assurances from Washington that it will swiftly and decisively use its nuclear capabilities to defend its allies in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack.
In his address to North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim described South Koreans as an American “upper class” obsessed with confrontation, and repeated threats that the North would annihilate the South with its nuclear weapons if provoked.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
