As North Korea vowed "merciless retaliation" against US-South Korean military drills it claims are an invasion rehearsal, senior US military commanders have dismissed calls to pause or downsize exercises.
The heated North Korean rhetoric 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.
'Strong diplomatic effort'
A visiting group of senior US military commanders, including Admiral 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.
Contentious
The US military officials were to travel to the site of a contentious US missile-defence system in South Korea later on Tuesday.
The North's military said in a statement that it will launch an unspecified "merciless retaliation and unsparing punishment" on the United States over the Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began on Monday for an 11-day run.
Despite the threat, an unprompted direct attack is extremely unlikely because the United States vastly outguns Pyongyang, which values the continuation of its dictatorship above all else.
Military tensions
The North Korean statement accused the US of deploying unspecified "lethal" weapons for the drills that it says involve a "beheading operation" training aimed at removing absolute ruler Kim Jong-un.
"No one can vouch that these huge forces concentrated in South Korea will not go over to an actual war action now that the military tensions have reached an extreme pitch in the Korean Peninsula," the statement said.
"Moreover, high-ranking bosses of the US imperialist aggressor forces flew into South Korea to hold a war confab. Such huddle is increasing the gravity of the situation."
