N. Korea says it won't `sit idle` through S. Korea-U.S. war exercises

SEOUL, Sept. 23 (Yonhap) -- North Korea on Tuesday harshly condemned a series of
joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises this year, claiming it would never sit
idle through the exercises.
"Our revolutionary armed forces will never sit idle through the senseless scheme
to provoke a war by the U.S. imperialists and the Lee Myung-bak group," Rodong
Shinmun, the most influential daily in the North, said in a commentary.
The commentary claimed Washington and Seoul have destroyed peace and security on
the Korean Peninsula, driving inter-Korean relation to an irreversible
catastrophe.
South Korea and the United States annually hold joint military drills codenamed
"Key Resolve," "Foal Eagle" and "Ulji Freedom Guardian" to ensure joint defense
capability against any contingency on the Korean Peninsula.
The last was the largest ever in the number of troops involved -- about 56,000
South Korean troops and 10,000 U.S. soldiers.
Apart from the regular drills, the two sides plan to launch a large-scale joint
landing exercise involving about 10,000 U.S. and South Korean marine forces in
November, according to military sources in Seoul.
The annual drills are defense-oriented, but the communist North routinely
criticizes the exercises as a prelude to war.
Washington currently maintains some 28,500 troops in South Korea as a deterrent
against possible aggression from North Korea. The two Koreas technically remain
at war as the Korean War ended only with a ceasefire, not a peace treaty.
The commentary noted that the new drill comes at a time when Washington and Seoul
are "unilaterally" trying to disarm North Korea's nuclear weapons in violation of
the six-party deal signed last year.
Pyongyang has accused Washington of reneging on its promise to take the communist
state off a list of terrorism-sponsoring countries as part of the deal under
which the North declared all its nuclear programs.
Washington refuses to delist the North unless Pyongyang agrees to ways to verify
the declaration.
The North said the war games are dangerous especially because they are intended
to prepare for a nuclear war on the peninsula. The U.S. mobilization of "various
means of a nuclear strike" in the drills is proof, it claimed.
The current situation forces the North to reinforce its military-first policy and
combat posture against invasion threats, the commentary warned.