Tag Archives: Foal Eagle

News, Politics, Government

North Korea demands end of sanctions, end of drills as conditions for resuming talks

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North Korea on Thursday demanded the withdrawal of U.N. sanctions and the end of U.S.-South Korea military drills as conditions for resuming talks meant to defuse tension on the Korean Peninsula.

The statement from the Policy Department of the National Defense Commission, the country’s top governing body, came four days after Pyongyang rejected Seoul’s latest dialogue offer as insincere. The U.S. says it is prepared to talk to the North but Pyongyang must first bring down tensions and honor previous disarmament agreements.

“Dialogue can never go with war actions,” said the statement, which was carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

Before the talks can resume, the statement said the U.S. must also withdraw all nuclear weapons assets from South Korea and the region. It said South Korea, for its part, must stop all anti-North Korea talks, such as its recent announcement blaming Pyongyang for a cyberattack that shut down tens of thousands of computers and servers at South Korean broadcasters and banks last month. North Korea has denied responsibility for the cyberattack.

Later Thursday, South Korea‘s Foreign Ministry dismissed the North’s demand as illogical. “We again strongly urge North Korea to stop this kind of insistence that we cannot totally understand and go down the path of a wise choice,” spokesman Cho Tai-young told reporters.

In recent weeks, North Korea has ratcheted up tension on the divided peninsula, threatening to attack the U.S. and South Korea over the military drills and sanctions imposed for its February nuclear test. Pyongyang calls the annual drills a rehearsal for invasion. South Korean officials have also said the North is poised to test-fire a medium-range missile capable of reaching the American territory of Guam.

The ongoing annual drills, called Foal Eagle, are to finish at the end of April. Seoul and Washington officials say they are defensive in nature, and insist they have no intentions of invading the North.

The U.S. has about 28,500 troops in South Korea to help deter potential aggression from North Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War. That war ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/s9XAYlFfV7I/

News, Politics, Government

NKorea marks founder's birthday, issues more ire

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North Korea quietly marked a second day of celebrations for its first leader’s birthday and issued prickly new rhetoric Tuesday threatening retaliation for what it sees as provocations by South Korea and the United States, who have been watching closely for signs the North may go ahead with a suspected medium-range missile launch.

State media said the Supreme Command of the Korean People’s Army issued an ultimatum demanding an apology from South Korea for “hostile acts” and threatening that unspecified retaliatory actions would happen at any time. The statement followed a day of festivities in North Korea‘s capital that featured art performances, public dances and crowds thronging to giant bronze statues to pay homage to the late leader Kim Il Sung.

The angry ultimatum, relayed through the Korean Central News Agency, was sparked by a small protest in downtown Seoul, where effigies of Kim Il Sung and his son and successor, late leader Kim Jong Il, were burned. Such protests are not unusual in South Korea and this one was likely more of a pretext for the North to react to calls that it join in dialogue with its neighbors than an actual cause for retaliation.

The North’s statement said it would refuse any offers of talks with the South until it apologized for the “monstrous criminal act.” North Korea often denounces such protests, but rarely in the name of the Supreme Command, which is headed by Kim Il Sung‘s grandson and North Korea‘s new leader, Kim Jong Un.

“If the puppet authorities truly want dialogue and negotiations, they should apologize for all anti-DPRK hostile acts, big and small, and show the compatriots their will to stop all these acts in practice,” the statement said, referring to North Korea‘s official name.

South Korea‘s Defense Ministry said Tuesday it had received no such ultimatum, noting that there is no communications line between the two Koreas.

Pyongyang launched a rocket ahead of the last anniversary of Kim Il Sung‘s birth, which was the centennial, but the holiday this year has been much more low-key, with Pyongyang residents gathering in performance halls and plazas and taking advantage of subsidized treats, like shaved ice and peanuts, despite unseasonably cold weather.

The calm in Pyongyang has been a striking contrast to the steady flow of threats North Korea has issued over ongoing military exercises between South Korea and the United States. Though the maneuvers, called Foal Eagle, are held regularly, North Korea was particularly

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/gvTRSimTeRY/

News, Politics, Government

NKorea fury at joint war games goes back decades

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The names of U.S.-South Korean war games staged over the years don’t sound all that threatening: Team Spirit, Ulchi Focus Lens, Key Resolve … Foal Eagle. But whatever they’re called, the annual show of force is guaranteed to get a rise out of Pyongyang.

Two decades ago, Kim Il Sung, the late founder of the still-ruling Kim dynasty, reportedly shook with rage while talking about the drills with a visiting U.S. congressman. This year’s drills, however, are unusual in the level of fury they’ve inspired from the North — Pyongyang has threatened nuclear war — and in the tougher than usual U.S. response that some call a case of Washington overplaying its hand.

In late March, two nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bombers — among the war-fighting wonders of the world — took off from their Missouri base and flew more than 6,500 miles to drop dummy munitions on an uninhabited South Korean island before returning home.

“Heinous nuclear war rehearsal,” the North’s propaganda screamed.

If that reaction sounds over the top, consider the view from Pyongyang.

The Korean War ended in 1953 in a tenuous cease-fire, leaving the peninsula technically in a state of war that continues today. For a poor, inward-looking, fiercely proud, authoritarian nation that has long been spooked by its bloody history with the world’s premier nuclear superpower, these weeks-long springtime assemblies of thousands of allied troops and their gleaming jets, ships and submarines are clear proof that Washington and Seoul have Pyongyang in its crosshairs.

At Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, evidence of America’s firepower was on display this week as a procession of its finest military machines barreled down a long runway separated from a sun-sparkling stream by a razor wire-topped fence. F-16 and A-10 jets, helicopters, a C-130 cargo plane powered up into the sky, banking over brown dirt fields, one-story Korean-style houses, dingy squat apartment buildings and long rows of crops covered with plastic to protect from a strong, cold early-spring wind.

Year after year, the allies call the exercises defensive and routine. And year after year, Pyongyang predicts they’re preparations for an invasion aimed at overthrowing its leadership. This year’s current Foal Eagle exercises, however, have seen the animosity spike.

The United States in late March made a calculated decision to show North Korea that a wave of threatening rhetoric

From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/EutQr1iIElw/