Australian troops join US war games as North Korea warns 'actual fighting' may evolve
As two dozen Australian troops prepare to join in 10 days of annual war games, North Korea have warned the US "they’re pouring gasoline on fire" by holding the drill in South Korea.
The annual Ulchi-Freedom Guardian exercise begins on Monday and involves more than 17,000 American troops along with small contingents from nations including South Korea, Australia, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, New Zealand and the Netherlands.
The Australians will work in the command and control post at a time where tensions have reached boiling point between between Pyongyang and Washington.
In an editorial published on Sunday the official North Korean newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, criticised the joint military exercise as an "expression of enmity", adding that no one can guarantee "that the exercise won't lead to hostilities."
Two dozen Australian troops have touched down in South Korea for the annual war games. Source: AAP
A photo distributed by the North Korean government late last month shows what was said to be the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Source: AAP
“The joint exercise is the most explicit expression of hostility against us, and no one can guarantee that the exercise won’t evolve into actual fighting,” it read.
“The Ulchi Freedom Guardian joint military exercises will be like pouring gasoline on fire and worsen the state of the peninsula.”
"If the United States is lost in a fantasy that war on the peninsula is at somebody else's door far away from them across the Pacific, it is far more mistaken than ever,” the paper added.
South Korean media has not shied away from the mounting tension between North Korea and the US. Source: AAP
The same exercises in 2016 provoked North Korea to conduct nuclear tests.
The US military newspaper Stars and Stripes acknowledged their "heightened fears that this year's UFG exercise may spark a new crisis" after Kim left open his threat to fire missiles into waters near Guam.
US President Donald Trump threatened North Korea with "fire and fury" after Pyongyang's latest missile tests and tweeted that "military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!"
