North and South Korea swap warnings ahead of war games

South Korea’s President urged North Korea yesterday to end its military provocations but Pyongyang threatened the “severest punishment” over Seoul’s massive joint war games with the United States.

The rivals exchanged tit-for-tat warnings as the South unveiled a roadmap for the reunification of the Korean peninsula on the eve of a 10-day exercise involving some 56,000 South Korean and 30,000 American soldiers.

“It is about time Pyongyang looked straight at reality, made a courageous change and came up with a drastic decision,” South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak said.

The Koreas “need to overcome the current state of division and proceed with the goal of peaceful reunification,” he said in a speech to celebrate Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945.

Mr Lee warned that South Korea would not tolerate any military provocations from its neighbour.

“The North must never venture to carry out another provocation nor will we tolerate it if they do so again,” he said.

But Pyongyang issued a fresh warning yesterday that its army and people would “deal a merciless counterblow” to the United States and South Korea over the war games.

“The military counteraction of (North Korea) will be the severest punishment... ever met in the world,” a spokesman for the North’s army General Chief said in a statement quoted by state media.

US and South Korean troops will start the computerised war games, called “Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), today as part of a flurry of military drills in response to the sinking of a South Korean warship in March.

General Walter Sharp, who heads some 28,500 US troops based in the South, described the exercise as “one of the largest joint staff directed theatre exercises in the world”.

A separate security drill involving some 400,000 South Korean government officials and soldiers will be held during the period, Yonhap news agency said.

The North denounced the war games as “practical actions aimed at full-dressed military invasion”.

Cross-border tensions have been high since May when Seoul and Washington, citing multinational investigation, said Pyongyang was behind the March attack that left 46 sailors dead.

The North has angrily denied responsibility and threatened retaliation.

In July, South Korea and the United States held a massive joint naval and air drill in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) in a show of force against the North. Last week the South staged its largest-ever anti-submarine drill near the disputed Yellow Sea border.

Tensions further escalated last week after North Korea seized a South Korean squid fishing boat operating off the east coast and fired an artillery barrage into the Yellow Sea when South Korea was wrapping up the anti-submarine drill.