More than 10,000 US troops will take part in a wide-scale landing drill in South Korea next week, the usa military said Thursday, days after North Korea test-fired 25 projectiles in apparent protest on the continuing joint exercises.
The drill, code-named Ssang Yong (“Twin Dragons”) and billed by local news media as one of the most largest-ever of amphibious landing exercises by both allies, will happen from March 27 through to April 7 at the southeast coast of South Korea.
It will involve 7,500 US Marines, 2,000 US Navy personnel, and an undisclosed variety of Australian and South Korean forces, a US military spokesman told AFP.
Yonhap news agency said 3,500 Marines and 1,000 Navy sailors would participate from South Korea.
“Ssang Yong 14 is an annual combined exercise conducted by Marine and Navy Forces with the ROK (South Korea) so as to strengthen the interoperability and dealing relationships of both militaries around the range of operations – from disaster relief, to complex expeditionary operations,” US Forces in Korea said in a press statement.
The US Marines playing the drill belong to the 3rd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, based in Okinawa, Japan, it said.
A total of 12 South Korean and US Navy amphibious ships can even take part in the drill, Yonhap said.
South Korea, which hosts 28,500 American troops, and america kicked off the yearly Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises on February 24. They’ll run until mid-April.
In a show of force apparently intended to specific anger on the continuing exercises, North Korea executed a chain of rocket and missile launches in recent weeks, sparking condemnation from Seoul and Washington.
The North has habitually slammed the exercises — at the side of other military drills south of the border — as rehearsals for an invasion.
Seoul and Washington say they’re purely defensive.
Last week, the North’s powerful National Defence Commission threatened to illustrate its nuclear deterrent within the face of what it called US hostility.
But Seoul’s defence ministry said there has been no sign of an imminent nuclear test by the North, which staged three atomic tests in 2006, 2009 and last year.
China’s special envoy Wu Dawei, who arrived in Pyongyang Monday, was in talks with North Koreans to talk about how you can resume six-party talks on its nuclear program.
“Special Representative Wu Dawei … held consultations with the DPRK (North Korea). Major topics include the location of the Korean Peninsula and the way to renew the Six-Party Talks,” Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Hong Lei told journalists on Wednesday.
Six-party talks involving both Koreas, China, the united states, Russia and Japan was stalled since December 2008.
The North and China like to resume the negotiations, but Washington and South Korea say before a resumption of discussions, the North must first show that is focused on the method, notably by shutting down a uranium enrichment program which the West believes may well be geared toward building a nuclear bomb.
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