Asia-PacificKorea

North Korea holds large-scale landing maneuvers

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North Korea has reportedly staged large-scale landing maneuvers involving the country’s units of ground, naval and air forces amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.

“Participating in the drill were combatants, artillery pieces of various calibres, combat ships including submarines, and formations of pursuit fighters, bombers and transport planes of units,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Saturday.

The military drill was directed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who watched his country’s forces successively pounding mock enemy positions.

During the exercise, the North Korean leader warned that South Korea would “regret bitterly” any incursion of their disputed maritime border.

Kim added that “the inviolable waters on the southwestern front of the country are exposed to frequent threat due to a handful of enemies,” according to the report.

On July 2, North Korea fired short-range rockets into the sea off its east coast just a day before a state visit by Chinese President Xi Jinping to Seoul. The issue of Pyongyang’s missile tests was high on the agenda of talks between Xi and his South Korean counterpart Park Geun-hye on July 3.

North Korea has recently conducted a series of rocket and ballistic missile launches and threatened to carry out a fourth nuclear test.

Pyongyang says it is developing a nuclear arsenal in an effort to protect itself from the US military which occasionally deploys nuclear-powered warships and aircraft in the region, capable of carrying atomic weapons.

The Korean Peninsula has been locked in a cycle of escalating military rhetoric since the Korean War, which lasted from 1950 to 1953. No peace deal has been signed since then, meaning that North and South Korea remain technically at war.

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