By Kang Seung-woo
South Korea and the United States started anti-submarine warfare drills off the west coast Monday, said military officials.
A U.S. 97,000-ton Nimitz-class nuclear-powered super carrier is expected to participate in the drill, which drew criticism from the North.
The exercise came after the North’s Policy Department of the National Defense Commission called on the South to stop hostile acts and military provocations if it is serious about the resumption of operations at the Gaesong Complex.
But the South’s defense ministry turned down this demand, describing it as “inappropriate.”
“As the drills are designed to defend against North Korean provocations, they cannot be stopped,” Ministry of National Defense Spokesman Kim Min-seok said at a briefing.
The naval exercise, which will run until Friday, is expected to re-ignite tensions on the Korean Peninsula, analysts said.
“Pyongyang has already shown negative reaction toward the exercise and is attempting to link it to a normalization of the closed Gaeseong Industrial Complex,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute.
The North suspended operations at the industrial park in the North’s border city on April 9, citing provocations by the South against its sovereign dignity.
“As it has been sensitive to the joint military action, it is expected to ramp up its vitriolic rhetoric again in the near future,” Cheong said.
The Kim Jong-un regime has issued almost daily threats over the past few months including nuclear strikes against Washington as well as Seoul, angered by the two-month Foal Eagle exercise, which wrapped up at the end of last month. In response, the United States dispatched state-of-the-art military hardware, including F-22 Raptors, B-2 stealth bombers and B-52s in an apparent show of force.
However, following the end of the Foal Eagle exercise, Pyongyang appears to have scaled down its military exercises.
“There are signs that the North began scaling down training flights of its war planes from the middle of last month and completely halted them after the end of Foal Eagle,” a military source told Yonhap News.
He added that the level of the North’s military exercises has also sharply decreased compared to that before mid-April.
President Park Geun-hye flew to the United States Sunday to meet with her U.S counterpart Barack Obama on Wednesday (KST) and they are expected to discuss how to resolve the North Korea issue.
However, Cheong said that it will take some time ― more specifically after the completion of the naval drill ― for the North to return to the negotiating table even if the South and the United States should come up with drastic plans for its solution.
“North Korea is likely to maintain a hard-line posture (toward South Korea and the United States) until the end of the naval exercise and wait and see what will come from the summit,” he said.