North Korea fires missiles, vows ‘merciless’ strikes against South Korea, U.S.

North Korea fired missiles into the sea Monday and vowed “merciless strikes” against the U.S. and South Korea, as the allies kicked off eight weeks of joint military drills denounced by Pyongyang. The annual exercises always trigger a surge in military tensions and warlike rhetoric on the divided peninsula, and analysts saw the North’s missile tests as a prelude to a concerted campaign of sabre rattling. The launches came with a stern warning from the nuclear-armed North Korean People’s Army (KPA) that this year’s drills would bring the peninsula “towards the brink of war.”

The only means to cope with the aggression and war by the U.S. imperialists and their followers is neither dialogue nor peace. They should be dealt with only by merciless strikes.

KCNA, North Korea’s official news agency

Although its nuclear program remains shrouded in uncertainty, Pyongyang is currently believed to have a stockpile of some 10 to 16 nuclear weapons fashioned from either plutonium or weapons-grade uranium. A new research report by U.S. experts published this week estimated that North Korea could be on track to have an arsenal of 100 nuclear weapons by 2020. The largest element of the two South Korea-U.S. drills that began Monday is Foal Eagle, an eight-week exercise involving air, ground and naval field training, with around 200,000 Korean and 3,700 US troops. The other is a week-long, largely computer-simulated joint drill called Key Resolve. Seoul and Washington insist the exercises are defence-based in nature, but they are regularly condemned by Pyongyang as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

Our revolutionary armed forces will never remain a passive onlooker to this grave situation. In case even a single shell drops on any place over which the sovereignty of the DPRK [North Korea] is exercised, it will promptly take counteractions.

A North Korean People’s Army spokesman

World North Korea