According to Seoul’s navy, a US aircraft carrier arrived in South Korea on Saturday as part of cooperative military exercises designed to strengthen defenses against North Korean threats.
The declaration was made the day after South Korea called the Russian ambassador to Seoul in protest of a defense agreement that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Vladimir Putin signed in Pyongyang this week. The agreement includes a promise to defend one another in the event of an attack.
“The US Navy’s aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt… arrived at the Busan Naval Base on the morning of June 22,” the South Korean Navy said in a statement.
Its arrival “demonstrates the strong combined defence posture of the South Korea-US alliance and their firm resolve to respond to the escalating threats from North Korea,” it added.
About seven months have passed since the USS Carl Vinson, another US aircraft carrier, visited the South as a show of force against Pyongyang.
This month, the USS Theodore Roosevelt is anticipated to take part in cooperative drills with Japan and South Korea. Similar coordinated maneuvers have traditionally been denounced by Pyongyang as invasion rehearsals.
In an effort to discourage the North, which has proclaimed itself a “irreversible” nuclear weapons power, the US, South Korea, and Japan have increased the scope of their cooperative training exercises and increased public awareness of key US military installations in the area.
The carrier arrived a day after Seoul said it had fired warning shots when North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the heavily fortified border in the third such incursion this month.
The South Korean military claims that North Korean forces have been increasing the number of landmines they plant, strengthening tactical routes, and erecting what appear to be anti-tank barriers close to the border.
A South Korean activist said on Friday that he had flown more balloons bearing propaganda north, adding to the tit-for-tat “balloon war” between the two Koreas.
More than a thousand balloons carrying rubbish have already been sent south by Pyongyang, and Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of Kim Jong, warned on Friday that the North is likely to retaliate.
