ABOARD USS GEORGE WASHINGTON — A nuclear-powered U.S. supercarrier began maneuvers today with ally South Korea in a show of force that North Korea has threatened could lead to “sacred war.”
The military drills, codenamed “Invincible Spirit,” are to run through Wednesday with about 8,000 U.S. and South Korean troops, 20 ships and submarines, and 200 aircraft. The Nimitz-class USS George Washington, with several thousand sailors and dozens of fighters aboard, was deployed from Japan.
The North routinely threatens attacks whenever South Korea and the U.S. hold joint military drills, which Pyongyang sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The U.S. keeps 28,500troops in South Korea and another 50,000 in Japan, but says it has no intention of invading North Korea.
Still, the North’s latest rhetoric threatening “nuclear deterrence” and “sacred war” was seen as carrying extra weight after the sinking of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors. Seoul and Washington say a North Korean torpedo was responsible for the March sinking of the Cheonan, considered the worst military attack on the South since the 1950-53 Korean War.
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The American and SouthKorean defense chiefs announced last week that they would stage the military drills to send a clear message to North Korea to stop its “aggressive” behavior.
The exercises are the first in a series of U.S.-South Korean maneuvers to be conducted in the Sea of Japan off Korea’s east coast and in the Yellow Sea closer to China’s shores in international waters. The exercises also are the first to employ the F-22 stealth fighter, which can evade North Korean air defenses, in South Korea.
South Korea was closely monitoring North Korea’s military, but no unusual activity was observed today, according to South Korea’s Defense Ministry.
North Korea, which denies any involvement in the sink-ing of the Cheonan warship, has warned the United States against attempting to punish it.
“The army and people of the DPRK will legitimately counter with their powerful nuclear deterrence the largestever nuclear war exercises to be staged by the U.S. and the South Korean puppet forces,” North Korea’s official news agency in Pyongyang quoted an unnamed government spokesman as saying. North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Though the impoverished North has a large conventional military and the capability to build nuclear weapons, it is not believed to have the technology needed to use nuclear devices as warheads.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced Wednesday, after visiting the Demilitarized Zone dividing the two Koreas, that the U.S. would slap new sanctions on the North to stifle its nuclear ambitions and punish it for the Cheonan sinking.
On Friday, the European Union said it, too, would consider new sanctions on North Korea.
The North’s Foreign Ministry said Saturday that Pyongyang will further strengthen its nuclear deterrent and again mentioned “powerful physical measures” in response to the U.S. military provocations and sanctions.
The George Washington will participate in the exercise in the Sea of Japan, but there are no plans for it to enter the Yellow Sea for the subsequent exercises.
China, a traditional North Korean ally, has voiced concerns that military drills in the Yellow Sea could inflame tensions on the Korean Peninsula and also fears exercises too close to its own shores could breach Chinese security.
Information for this article was contributed from Seoul by Kwang-Tae Kim and Hyung-jin Kim of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 13 on 07/25/2010