US dismisses calls to pause military drills

As North Korea vowed "merciless retaliation" against US-South Korean military drills that it claims are an invasion rehearsal, senior US military commanders yesterday dismissed calls to pause or downsize exercises they called crucial to countering a clear threat from Pyongyang.

The heated North Korean rhetoric, along with occasional weapons tests, is standard fare during the spring and summer war games by allies Seoul and Washington, but always uneasy ties between the Koreas are worse than normal this year following weeks of tit-for-tat threats between President Donald Trump and Pyongyang in the wake of the North's two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month.

There have been calls in both the United States and South Korea to postpone or modify the drills in an attempt to ease hostility on the Korean Peninsula following North Korea's threat to lob missiles toward the US territory of Guam. But a visiting group of senior US military commanders, including Adm Harry Harris, the commander of US forces in the Pacific, said the drills are critical for the allies to maintain readiness against an aggressive North Korea.

"A strong diplomatic effort backed by a strong military effort is key because credible combat power should be in support of diplomacy and not the other way around," Harris said during a news conference at South Korea's Osan Air Base.

Vincent Brooks, commander of US Forces Korea, said the allies should continue the war games until they "have reason not to." ''That reason has not yet emerged," he said.

The US military officials were to travel to the site of a contentious US missile-defense system in South Korea later yesterday.