South Korea and the United States began a preliminary military training drill Tuesday ahead of their annual summertime exercise starting next week, Yonhap News Agency reported, swiftly triggering a backlash from North Korea.
Seoul and Washington have decided to carry out the four-day training exercise, focused mainly on preparing for contingencies, as planned despite a warning from Pyongyang that it will negatively affect inter-Korean relations, according to the report.
The main summertime exercise, which will be computer-simulated, is scheduled to be held on Aug. 16-26. The United States, South Korea and Japan are watching whether the North will take any provocative action, such as testing a ballistic missile, during the period.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's sister and close side Kim Yo Jong said in a statement that the joint military drills would "further imperil the situation on the Korean peninsula."
"I would like to express my deep regret at the perfidious behavior of the south Korean authorities," Kim Yo Jong said in the statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.
"Whatever the scale and mode, the joint military exercises are of an aggressive nature as they are a war rehearsal and preliminary nuclear war exercise," she said, pledging that North Korea will bolster its deterrence against the military threat from the United States.
July 27 marked the 68th anniversary of the signing of an armistice that suspended open hostilities in the 1950-1953 Korean War, in which the North was supported by China and the Soviet Union and the South was backed by U.S.-led United Nations forces.
On the same day, the two Koreas said Kim Jong Un and South Korean President Moon Jae In agreed to reconnect communications between the two nations, after exchanging several friendly letters since April.
But Kim Yo Jong said on Tuesday, "As long as the U.S. forces stay in South Korea, the root cause for the periodic aggravation of the situation on the Korean peninsula will never vanish."
Amid the warnings from North Korea, South Korea's Unification Ministry and Defense Ministry said later on Tuesday that regular inter-Korean phone calls were not held via communications lines as calls to Pyongyang went unanswered.
Since the reconnection, the two Koreas had been holding phone conversations every mid-morning and late afternoon, just as they used to before the lines were disconnected.
Both ministries added that they are closely monitoring the situation.
South Korea and the United States usually conduct joint military drills in the spring and the summer of every year. To avoid irritating North Korea, the South is believed to have sought to scale down the exercises this time around.
As the Korean War ended in a cease-fire rather than a peace treaty, the North and South are still technically in a state of war.
In June 2020, Pyongyang blew up an inter-Korean liaison office in the country's border city of Kaesong after shutting down all lines of communication with Seoul, in retaliation for defectors launching balloons containing leaflets critical of the North.
As for relations between the United States and North Korea, their negotiations on denuclearization on the Korean Peninsula and sanctions relief have been stalled for around two years.
The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden, who took office in January, now plans to keep its North Korea policy flexible while building on an agreement reached during a 2018 bilateral summit that included Pyongyang's commitment toward denuclearization.
North Korea, however, has voiced reluctance to hold talks with the Biden administration unless Washington withdraws what Pyongyang considers its hostile policy position.
The United States and North Korea have no diplomatic ties.
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