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South Korean and U.S. forces began live-fire exercises simulating a “full-scale attack” from North Korea.
The respective forces flexed their military muscle to showcase its “overwhelming” military prowess against Kim Jong-un.
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The dramatic scenes saw Howitzers pound into a mountainside close to the fortified border with North Korea on Thursday, May 25.
Elsewhere, battle tanks maneuvered and fired their guns at targets, sending smoke, dust, and shockwaves across the valley.
The exercises are the first of four to be carried out between now and mid-June, South Korea’s defense ministry revealed.
Around 2,500 troops from South Korea and the United States performed attacks on simulated targets to “completely annihilate” the North’s military in the event of a nuclear attack.
The ministry said: “The exercise demonstrated our military’s capability and readiness to strongly respond to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats and to a full-scale attack”.
It comes after the North’s stark warning that it wouldn’t tolerate what it called “a typical North Korea-targeted war rehearsal” on its doorstep.
Last week, North Korea’s propaganda media also reported that its despot leader had approved final preparations for the launch of the country’s first military spy satellite to combat threats from the U.S. and South Korea.
Analysts say the satellite will improve North Korea’s surveillance capability, allowing it to dismantle targets with devastating accuracy if a war were to break out.
Recent commercial satellite imagery showed progress on a new launch pad in the North’s satellite launching station, with activity at a “new level of urgency,” most likely in preparation for the launch, the U.S.-based monitoring group 38 North said.
In a meeting last month, U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol announced steps to reinforce their deterrence capabilities such as the periodic docking of U.S. nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea, strengthened joint training exercises and establishment of a new nuclear consultative group.
Biden also issued a chilling warning to North Korea that any nuclear attack would “result in the end of whatever regime”.
The totalitarian leader’s sister and senior official Kim Yo Jong slammed the Biden-Yoon coalition as the two countries’ “most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North.
She continued: “The pipe dream of the U.S. and South Korea will henceforth be faced with the entity of more powerful strength.”
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