By Jung Sung-ki
South Korea and the United States will stage a new round of joint exercises designed to send a deterrent message to North Korea in the near future, the top American commander in Seoul said, despite China’s complaints about such drills.
The exercise will involve a U.S. aircraft carrier, Gen. Walter Sharp, commander of U.S. Forces Korea and Combined Forces Command, hinted.
Sharp also rebutted a controversial remark by a top Chinese official that the Korean War was provoked by a South Korean invasion.
Sharp expected the next exercise, which was temporarily postponed due to scheduling problems, will be rescheduled in the “not-too-distant” future, according to a Pentagon Channel news program.
“Over the remainder of this year and into the future, we are going to continue with a series of exercises that looks very directly at how we can strengthen the alliance based on what we see going on in North Korea,” Sharp said.
Last week, a South Korean news agency reported that the third exercise, which tentatively had been slated for late October, was shelved to placate China.
So far, two major exercises by the South Korean and U.S. militaries have been held in the waters off the inter-Korean sea border in the West Sea, where a South Korean warship was allegedly torpedoed by North Korea in March.
Forty-six sailors were killed in the sinking of the ship Cheonan.
The first, in July, focused on naval and air readiness. Earlier this month, the U.S. and South Korean Navies wrapped up five days of anti-submarine warfare drills in the western seas.
The third exercise was to include the USS George Washington aircraft, which had participated in the first exercise, dubbed Invincible Spirit.
Chinese leaders spoke out strongly against earlier U.S.-South Korean exercises, as Beijing considers most of the West Sea, or Yellow Sea, to be their territory, despite international agreements that declare most of those areas to be open waters.
“All countries of the region are concerned with what is going on in North Korea,” Sharp, who concurrently serves as chief of the United Nations Command, said. He cited ballistic missile shoots, nuclear tests and other threatening acts by the North, such as the Cheonan sinking.
He continued, “As we go into the future, North Korea has an opportunity here to be able to change their ways and to become much more responsible ― to denuclearize, to [address]… human rights within the country and to stop the provocations that they have been doing.”
Sharp made it clear that North Korea’s invasion provoked the three years of fratricidal war on the Korean Peninsula.
On Monday, Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, widely tipped as Beijing’s next leader, called the Korean War “a great and just war for safeguarding peace and resisting aggression.”
Xi made the remarks during a meeting with veterans of the Chinese People's Volunteers to commemorate the 60th anniversary of China's entry into the war. Xi said the war was imposed on the people of China by “imperialist invaders,” and the Communist Party of China and Mao Zedong decided to enter the war at the request of North Korea while the security of the new China was at risk.
South and North Korea remain technically at war since the war ended in a truce.
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