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A major US-South Korean military exercise involving about 20 ships, 200 planes and 8,000 personnel will start Sunday in the Sea of Japan (East Sea) to deter North Korea, the US military said on Tuesday. The July 25-28 drill will highlight the resolve of the two countries "to face any threat North Korea may pose", the US-led United Nations Command said in a statement. The war games are a response to the sinking of a South Korean warship earlier this year, which Seoul and Washington blame on North Korea. The announcement followed talks between visiting US Defense Secretary Robert Gates...

– The United States and South Korea today announced a series of military exercises designed to send a strong, clear message to North Korea to stop its provocative and warlike acts. Video U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Republic of Korea National Defense Minister Kim Tae-young released a joint statement on the exercises following meetings here. The first in a series is a combined maritime and air readiness exercise named Invincible Spirit. About 8,000 U.S. and ROK military personnel will participate. The exercise is in response to the unprovoked attack on and sinking of the South Korean frigate Cheonan...

Indonesia agreed on Thursday to join a South Korean project to develop a new fighter jet which has been delayed for years by technical and budget problems. Indonesia will acquire about 50 of the KF-X fighters in return for shouldering 20 percent of the development costs in the multi-million dollar project, the South Korean defense ministry said. The two sides also agreed to work together in production and marketing. The deal was signed in Seoul by Byun Moo-Keun, commissioner for the ministry’s Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA), and his Indonesian counterpart Eris Herryanto. South Korea launched the project in 2000...

South Korea and the United States will push ahead with a joint naval exercise to warn North Korea against making attacks on the South, officials in Seoul and Washington said. But a defense ministry official told the JoongAng Ilbo that the two countries have arrived at a compromise to avoid angering China, which objected to the exercise being held in the Yellow Sea near its own territorial waters. “We will hold drills in both the Yellow Sea and the East Sea,” the official said. In addition, the U.S.S. George Washington, a U.S. Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, will participate in the exercise...

The U.S. government is apparently debating how to stage joint exercises with South Korea not only this month but all year round as a response to North Korea's torpedo attack on the South Korean Navy corvette Cheonan in March. A diplomatic source in Washington on Tuesday said the U.S. is thinking a lot about these joint exercises "to deliver a clear message to the North." Following the planned joint drill this month, the two countries will further upgrade the Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise, which is staged in August every year, and may also possibly conduct various other kinds of drills....

Military officers from the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) and North Korea ended a rare meeting Thursday, officials said, the first such meeting since the March sinking of a warship blamed on the communist country. "The meeting ended at around 11:30 a.m.," said an official at the UNC. The official said he had no information on the results of the meeting that lasted about one and a half hours, adding they will be announced later in the day. The colonel-level meeting was aimed at arranging talks of general-grade officers between the two sides for discussions on the sinking, which a...

Security along the DMZ has gone high-tech, as South Korea has quietly installed a number of machine gun-armed robots to serve as the first line of defense against the potential advance of North Korean soldiers. The stationary robots — which look like a cross between a traffic signal and a tourist-trap telescope — are more drone than Terminator in concept, operated remotely just outside the southern boundary of the DMZ by humans in a nearby command center. Officials refuse to say how many or where the robots have been deployed along the heavily fortified border between the two Koreas, but...

South Korea's military plans to convene a disciplinary committee meeting late this month to censure senior officers over the deadly sinking of a naval ship in North Korea's torpedo attack in March, an official said Sunday. Last month, South Korea's state audit agency, the Board of Audit and Inspection (BAI), asked the defense ministry to reprimand 25 senior military officers, accusing them of mishandling the March 26 sinking of the warship Cheonan, which left 46 sailors dead. "We're conducting an investigation to determine the accountability of those accused by the BAI," a senior defense ministry official said on condition of...

South Korea and the United States will stage large-scale anti-submarine drills in the Yellow Sea after the United Nations takes action against Pyongyang for sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan, Yonhap news agency said. "The joint drills will be carried out after the U N Security Council takes measure against North Korea," the agency quoting Col. Lee Bung Woo said. The United States’s 97,000-ton USS George Washington, an Aegis-equipped destroyer, and a nuclear-powered submarine are reportedly participating in the joint naval drills and a 4,500-ton destroyer, a submarine and F-15K fighter jets will take part from the South Korean...

The planned creation of the U.S. Korea Command has been delayed to October or later, according to a source at the Ministry of Defense yesterday. The source told the JoongAng Ilbo that the new command structure was supposed to be created on June 1, but Seoul and Washington agreed to push back its creation to October or later, because of the delay of the transfer of wartime operational control of South Korean soldiers from the U.S. to South Korea. The U.S. Korea Command will be a new organization of the U.S. military forces here to be used after Korea is...

South Korea's Defense Ministry is seeking a sharp increase in next year's budget to improve its fighting capability due to tensions over the deadly sinking of a warship blamed on North Korea, an official said Wednesday. Defense Ministry officials have agreed to request about 31.6 trillion won ($25.8 billion) next year to introduce new weapons and improve military hardware and welfare facilities for troops, a ministry official said on condition of anonymity, citing department policy. The amount would represent a 6.9 percent increase from the 29.5 trillion won budgeted this year, which was a 3.6 percent increase from the year...

Leaders of South Korea and the United States have delayed Seoul’s scheduled takeover of wartime operational control of its troops to Dec. 1, 2015, pushing back the transfer date three years and seven months. The decision was made at a meeting between Presidents Lee Myung-bak and Barack Obama before the Group of 20 financial summit here on Saturday. The two leaders also discussed security issues and North Korea’s recent provocation, government officials said. When the 1950-53 Korean War began, South Korea handed over peacetime and wartime operational control of its soldiers to the U.S.-led United Nations Command, after which the...

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak and his American counterpart Barack Obama announced a three-year delay in Washington's transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) to Seoul, citing the volatile atmosphere on the Korean Peninsula with North Korea's continued military provocations, most recently a deadly naval attack on a warship. The leaders also agreed to make concrete efforts to revive their long-stalled free trade agreement talks, as Obama set November as the deadline for completing necessary discussions. Obama began the summit with Lee with a show of his resolve to make North Korea pay a price for sinking a South Korean warship,...

US forces will regain control over a major annual military exercise with South Korea amid rising tensions with the North following the sinking of one of Seoul's warships, officials said on Thursday. Seoul's defence ministry said the Combined Forces Command led by US General Walter Sharp will retake control of the computerised war game called Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) from this year. In 2008 and last year the South's military took control of the exercise, to prepare for a scheduled transfer of wartime command in the military alliance. UFG, which is due to start in mid-August, is the world's largest...

Amid growing military tensions between the North and South, Seoul mobilised troops and police early on Thursday after a resident of Ansan, 22 miles south-west of the South Korean capital, reported that 40 to 50 flying objects resembling parachutes had fallen on a mountain the previous night. Upon inspection, the objects were identified as helium balloons released by children at a nearby school. Tensions on the Korean peninsular have been high since the sinking of the South's warship earlier this year. Seoul has said that the ship was torpedoed by Pyongyang. Earlier this month, an explosion Yeonpyeong Island, near the...

US aircraft carrier will join a major anti-submarine naval exercise with South Korea next week in a show of strength to North Korea after the sinking of a warship, reports said Wednesday. South Korea, which accuses the North of torpedoing its ship Cheonan in March with the loss of 46 lives, is also mounting a diplomatic drive at the United Nations but indicated it would not seek new sanctions. The USS George Washington will leave its base in the Japanese port of Yokosuka around Saturday and arrive in the Yellow Sea early next week, Yonhap news agency quoted a military...

South Korea is reviewing its defense policy following North Korea's alleged sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, a process that could significantly change Seoul's military alliance with Washington, according to officials engaged in the process. Over the past week, U.S. and South Korean leaders have outlined plans to conduct war games and strategy sessions to better equip the South for combating the type of submarine attack Pyongyang is accused by international investigators to have staged in March, killing 46 South Korean sailors. For the longer term, President Lee Myung-bak's conservative government could seek to alter the alliance's command structure...

U.S. and South Korean forces said they are ready to repel any threat posed by North Korea as 24 stealth fighter jets deploy to the region and a report said the military alert level has been raised. Naval vessels plan anti-submarine exercises close to the disputed maritime border between North and South Korea where one of the South’s warships sank on March 26, killing 46 sailors. An international team of experts last week concluded that a North Korean torpedo blew apart the Cheonan, prompting Kim Jong Il’s regime to cut all ties with the South and threaten “all-out war” over...

The five-year-old defense reform initiative aimed at building smaller but high-tech armed forces is under intense review following the sinking of the frigate in a "surprise attack" by North Korea The Defense Reform 2020 plan was initiated in 2005 by the liberal Roh Moo-hyun administration in pursuit of a "self-reliant" military that could deal with regional threats beyond defense against a North Korean invasion. The plan included reducing the number of standing troops and instead equipping the armed forces with advanced weapons systems by 2020 in stages. The Roh administration believed the level of North Korean threat would decrease gradually...

South Korea's defense chief said Monday his military will launch its own anti-proliferation exercise and resume psychological warfare against North Korea, as parts of its initial military measures to punish Pyongyang for a deadly torpedo attack on a South Korean warship in March. The planned military exercise scheduled to take place in the second half of the year to deter proliferation of North Korean weapons of mass destruction will be the first of its kind by the South's military. Defense Minister Kim Tae-young also said the South would actively participate in a U.S.-led anti-proliferation drill, known as the Proliferation of...