North Korea on Aug. 4 condemned U.S.-South Korea-Japan military cooperation, including the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC), as a “new security crisis” in the Asia-Pacific region and threatened to respond with a “new level of deterrence.”
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) made the claim in an article titled “The Threat of the U.S.-Japan-South Korea Triad Becoming Entrenched as a New Security Crisis in the Asia-Pacific Region,” published under the name of a military affairs commentator.
The commentator cited RIMPAC, the world’s largest maritime exercise held every other year, as an example of what it described as an increasingly overt “trilateral” military threat by the United States, Japan and South Korea seeking to secure military superiority through the continuous strengthening of their combined warfighting capabilities while openly ignoring the security concerns of countries in the region.
The commentator said more than 30,000 troops, about 30 surface ships, five submarines and about 190 aircraft were deployed for this year’s exercise in Hawaii, with more than 500 maritime drills and more than 2,400 flight exercises conducted.
It particularly criticized the fact that South Korea, which has participated in RIMPAC since 1990, for the first time served as commander of the Combined Task Force, responsible for integrating the naval forces of participating countries, while Japan served as deputy commander of the Combined Task Force.
The commentator claimed that this “makes clear the U.S. strategic intention to establish absolute military hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region by strengthening interoperability with South Korea and Japan under the assumption of actual combat and placing greater security burdens on them.”
It also cited remarks by the deputy commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet that the command roles given to South Korea and Japan were “not symbolic but for actual operational purposes,” arguing that RIMPAC was “effectively a demonstration of war of aggression led by the United States, Japan and South Korea.”
The commentator also said that “in July alone, the United States and South Korea conducted the joint air exercise Ssangma under the pretext of strengthening their air cooperation capabilities and staged the Combined Joint Sustainment Support Exercise on an unprecedented scale, taking into account logistical support from the U.S. mainland and overseas military bases in the event of a contingency on the Korean Peninsula.”
It further claimed that “the United States is accelerating efforts to reorganize U.S. Forces Japan into an ‘integrated military command’ with independent operational capabilities, with the aim of strengthening command-and-control coordination with Japan’s Joint Operations Command, and is seeking to deploy the Typhon strategic intermediate-range missile system, which places countries in the region within its range, in South Korea following its deployment in Japan.”
The commentator also said, “Japan has completely shed the deceptive guise of ‘exclusive defense,’ publicly raised discussions about its own nuclear armament and conducted drills to launch Tomahawk long-range cruise missiles acquired from the United States in the Pacific, while South Korea has begun full-scale development of nuclear-powered submarines while talking about the ‘maritime threats’ posed by neighboring countries.”
It then said, “Responding to a new level of threat with a new level of deterrence is our country’s consistent approach to controlling the situation and managing crises,” adding that “the emergence of a U.S.-led ‘axis of confrontation’ must naturally be guarded against and deterred.”
