US and S Korea begin war games

[Lars77]

Source: Al Jazeera

Thousands of troops from the US and South Korea have begun 10 days of joint military exercises, despite threats of reprisals from North Korea which has denounced the annual drill as a rehearsal for invasion.

Some 18,000 American and an undisclosed number of South Korean troops began the exercise on Monday, military officials from both sides said.

Kim Yong-kyu, a US military spokesman, said the exercises are aimed at rehearsing the deployment of US reinforcements in the event of an emergency on the Korean peninsula.

The US and South Korea say the exercises – which include live-firing by US Marines, aerial attack drills and urban warfare training – are purely defensive.

Read more: http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/03/201038519091698.html

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Gotta spend some of that bloated budget.

[Qanisqineq]

1. they have these every year

I've lived in S. Korea for four years, my husband was a soldier here and now works on the army base, and this is nothing new.

[jmowreader]

2. "Budget" has nothing to do with it

One thing the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the part north of the Military Demarcation Line) and the Republic of Korea (the part south of it) agree on is their desire for reunification. They don't agree on the form of government, though; the North Koreans won't reunify unless they can have a communist dictatorship, and the South Koreans won't reunify under one.

The government of this country has always felt the North Koreans would attempt to invade South Korea to force the ROK into a communist Reunified Korea. Our government has also always felt the best time to do it would be in the first couple weeks of March--the Han Estuary is still frozen hard enough the ice sheet can support the weight of a tank, the ground in the area is still hard enough to support a tank, but enough of the snow's gone that vehicles won't be getting stuck in it. So...we reinforce the 2nd Infantry Division with from one to two additional stateside divisions, and have a field training exercise. It used to be called Team Spirit but in the spirit of openness and extending the olive branch of good fellowship we cancelled it for several years. Every time we extended one of those branches the North Koreans ate it (severe food shortages in North Korea, you know) so we went back to holding the exercises--they've got a different name but they're the same exercise.

The Korean Central News Agency has always described these exercises as a pretext to invasion, and the NK Ministry of Defense has always put the North Korean Army on full alert.

Sum total: we hold an exercise every year and the North Koreans claim we're planning to invade every year...but we hold the exercise because if the North Koreans were planning to invade they'd do it during the timeframe we hold the exercise.

[Lars77]

3. You make a good point

but i still consider the budget bloated ;)

[jmowreader]

4. I consider it bloated too...

but how bloated would it be if we had to raise a draft to get the North Koreans back across the MDL?

[cowman]

5. You ever been

stationed in Korea? I have during the early 70's. That is a very tense place to be. Back the on the DMZ the NK's wouldn't hesitate to shoot an officer and claim that it was justified because we were getting ready to invade. Those people are just plain nuts but now they have nuclear weapons

[smirkymonkey]

6. I saw a documentary on North Korea over the weekend.

Scariest damn thing I have ever seen. I would put nothing past them.

[cowman]

7. I agree

Iran's not the one i'm worried about, NK, IMHO, is our greatest threat

[dixiegrrrrl]

9. yeah, but No. ora has no oil or transport routes for gas/oil.

Ergo....no threat.

Iran, on the other hand, can seriously mess up the OIL-garchy in the Middle East.
hence, Iran is "a threat:.

[Turbineguy]

8. Li'l Kim

puts on his brown pants.