SOUTH KOREA’S JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF VIA AP
In this photo provided via South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, left, sails with the South Korean Navy destroyer Aegis King Sejong the Great and the Navy destroyer Kongou Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force Aegis in foreign waters off the south coast. of the Korean Peninsula a recent joint exercise in 2024.
SEOUL, South Korea >> The United States, South Korea and Japan conducted combined naval exercises involving an American aircraft carrier in their latest show of strength against nuclear-armed North Korea, South Korea’s military said Wednesday, as the three countries’ senior diplomats were to meet in Seoul to discuss the deepening standoff with Pyongyang.
The education in the waters off South Korea’s Jeju Island came as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un continues his provocative crusade of weapons tests and threats that has raised regional tensions to their highest point in years.
This week in Pyongyang’s parliament, Kim said North Korea would abandon its longstanding commitment to nonviolent unification with South Korea and ordered a rewrite of the North’s charter with the concept of a shared state between countries divided by war.
His speech on Monday came a day after North Korea conducted its first ballistic test of 2024, which state media described as a new intermediate-diversity solid-fuel missile fitted with a hypersonic warhead, reflecting its push toward diversity of weapons aimed at the United States. Military bases in Guam and Japan.
South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the trilateral naval drills, which completed its three-day program on Wednesday, involved nine warships from the countries, including U.S. aircraft carrier Carl Vinson and Aegis destroyers from South Korea and Japan.
The training was aimed at the combined deterrence and reaction functions of countries opposing North Korea’s nutransparent, ballistic and submarine threats, as well as activity in preventing illicit maritime shipments of weapons of mass destruction, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said. whether the activity reflected considerations about alleged arms transfers from North Korea to Russia to assist that country in the war in Ukraine.
In Seoul, South Korean nuclear envoy Kim Gunn was scheduled to meet with Japanese counterpart Namazu Hiroyuki Wednesday, a day before their trilateral meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden’s deputy special representative for North Korea, Jung Pak, to coordinate their response toward the North.
In the face of North Korea’s growing nuclear threats, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s conservative government has expanded military cooperation with the United States and Japan, which Kim has called invasion rehearsals. Yoon also called on Washington to guarantee that it will temporarily occupy and decisively use its nuclear functions to protect its best friend in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack.
In his speech to North Korea’s Supreme People’s Assembly, Kim described South Koreans as “first-class companions” of the United States obsessed with confrontation, and reiterated his risk that the North would annihilate the South with its nuclear weapons if they provoked it.
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