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/
search for its signs. In Poland, the return of the beloved storks from warmer climates is one such sign and precipitates preparations for the Drowning of Marzanna (topienie Marzanny), also known as the Frost Maiden and Winter Witch. This holdover from pagan times used to take place on the fourth Sunday of Lent, but these days takes place on the first day of spring — March 21. It’s a chance to symbolically “kill” or bury winter and welcome in spring, rebirth, new crops and the warmth of the sun.