Tensions mount in 2 Koreas

SEOUL, South Korea — The United States and South Korea began their largest joint war games in years Sunday, with a nuclear-powered American aircraft carrier prowling off the east coast of South Korea while North Korea threatened to retaliate and reportedly put its military on alert for war.

The rising tensions demonstrated just how tenuous peace has been on the divided peninsula since the Korean War was halted, 57 years ago Tuesday, by a cease-fire between the U.S.-led forces of the United Nations and the communist troops of North Korea and China.

The latest escalation of tensions began in March when a South Korean warship was sunk, and 46 sailors died. A team of investigators from South Korea, the United States and several other countries determined in May that North Korea had torpedoed the ship.

North Korea denied the accusation and called the investigation a “fake.” China, North Korea’s main ally, also rejected it.

The United States and South Korea announced new sanctions against North Korea last week when their foreign and defense ministers traveled together to the inter-Korean border in a gesture of confronting the North.

On Sunday, in a show of the allies’ military power, a fleet of U.S. and South Korean ships and submarines sailed into waters off the east coast of South Korea, led by the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington, one of the biggest ships in the U.S. Navy. Japan, a historical rival of Korea but an ally of South Korea and the United States in their confrontation with the North, dispatched observers to the four-day exercise.

The drills mobilized 20 ships, a combined 8,000 troops and an unusually large number of warplanes: more than 200 aircraft, including the F-22 Raptor fighter, which was part of an exercise in South Korea for the first time.

The exercises this week are the first in what is scheduled to be a series of joint U.S.-South Korean maneuvers over the coming months. U.S. officialswarned last week that a power struggle over who will succeed the ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, might prompt the North to attempt further military provocations.

On Saturday, North Korea vowed to start a “sacred war” against the United States and South Korea at “any time necessary” to counter their “largest-ever nuclear war exercises” with its own “powerful nuclear deterrence.”

Radio Free Asia reported that the North had put both its military and its people on high alert. North Korea often uses tensions with the United States to rally solidarity at home and to justify development of nuclear weapons.

Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea analyst at Dongguk University in Seoul, said the North would probably test short-range missiles and fire artillery in waters near the disputed western sea border and might even try to test a long-range missile or a nuclear device.

“North Korea will try to fend off the mounting joint pressure from the United States and South Korea by ratcheting up tensions in stages,” Kim said. “For now, both Washington and Seoul seem to believe that they’ve got nothing big to lose by continuing the pressure. What worries me is that the tension is not just between the two Koreas, but also between the biggies, the United States and China.”

China has been unusually vocal in criticizing the joint maneuvers, prompting the allies to relocate the drills from the Yellow Sea, west of the Korean Peninsula, to the Sea of Japan on the east.

The North routinely threatens attacks whenever South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. keeps 28,500 troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan, but says it has no intention of invading the North.

Capt. Ross Myers, the commander of the George Washington’s air wing, said the exercises were not intended to raise tensions.

But the George Washington, one of the biggest ships in the U.S. Navy, is a potent symbol of American military power, with about 5,000 sailors and aviators and the capacity to carry up to 70 planes.

“North Korea may contend that it is a provocation, but I would say the opposite,” Myers said. “It is a provocation to those who don’t want peace and stability. North Korea doesn’t want this. They know that one of South Korea’s strengths is its alliance with the United States.”

Myers said North Korea’s threats to retaliate are being taken seriously, however.

“There is a lot they can do,” he said. “They have ships, they have subs, they have airplanes. They are a credible threat.” Information for this article was contributed by Eric Talmadge of The Associated Press.