SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea, the United States and Japan will begin anti-submarine drills on Monday with the aim of better countering North Korea’s growing nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities, the official said. South Korean Ministry of Defense, specifying that the maneuvers would last two days.
These trilateral exercises will be conducted in international waters off Jeju Island, south of South Korea, and will include a group of US Navy ships guided by the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, which arrived last week. last at the port of Busan, in the southeast of the country.
They come after North Korea last week unveiled new downsized nuclear warheads and touted what it touted as nuclear-capable underwater attack drones.
Seoul, Washington and Tokyo had already organized joint underwater maneuvers last September, a first in five years, against a backdrop of renewed tensions on the Korean peninsula with repeated missile tests carried out by Pyongyang.
(Report Soo-hyang Choi; French version Jean Terzian)
