오늘 '한미연합지휘소훈련' 종료... 北 마지막날까지 비난 "용납 못할 군사적 도발"
The South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises wrap up today... but until the very end,... North Korea is continuing to criticize South Korea for carrying out what it calls "military provocations."
Oh Jung-hee reports.
Will tensions ease and dialogue resume on the Korean Peninsula with the end of the Seoul-Washington joint military exercise?
The drills named "Combined Command Post Training" come to an end on Tuesday.
The ten-day-long exercise did not involve real troops or equipment for field training. Instead it was a computer-based simulation assuming a wartime situation.
It was aimed at verifying South Korea's capacity for the transfer of wartime operational control from Washington.
For the first time, a South Korean general served as the commander, and an American general, the vice commander.
With "Combined Command Post Training" ending Tuesday, no more joint drills are scheduled for the rest of 2019.
The allies, in an effort to keep denuclearization talks on track this year, carried out drills that were relatively scaled down "DongMaeng nineteen-dash-one" in the first half and "Combined Command Post Training" in the latter half of the year.
But North Korea, which has long been sensitive about the drills, conducted six launches of new projectiles over the past few weeks... as a tit-for-tat move.
And on Tuesday, the last day of the exercise, Pyeongyang's state media once again slammed South Korea, saying the joint exercise is clearly a hostile act and an unacceptable military provocation that aims to invade the North.
Views remain divided on whether North Korea will continue or stop its missile tests after these drills end.
Earlier this month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un wrote to U.S. President Donald Trump,... saying "he'd like to meet and start negotiations as soon as the drills are over."
But as North Korea has long been opposed to Seoul introducing new weapons such as F-35A stealth fighter jets more of which arrive in South Korea this week the South's military is not ruling out more weapons tests from the north of the border in the coming days and weeks.
Oh Jung-hee, Arirang News.
