South Korea and the United States need efforts to resume dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) instead of being engrossed in war games that escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.
Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) computer-simulated exercises kicked off on Monday, mobilizing tens of thousand of combined forces of the two allies. It is scheduled to run through next Friday, mounting the already-heightened tensions in the region further until the exercises end.
Seoul and Washington claim that their drills are defensive in nature, but this year's exercises allegedly adopts a so-called Operation Plan 5015, a wartime joint response scenario signed in June last year between the two countries.
The OPLAN 5015 involves a U.S.-South Korea preemptive strike against the DPRK, contradicting their claim to the defensiveness by themselves.
Rather, the drills are aggressive, only to raise possibility for military conflicts on the peninsula.
Strong backlashes came from Pyongyang, which said it would "foil all hostile acts and threat of aggression and provocation with the Korean-style nuclear deterrence."
The DPRK sees the U.S.-South Korea annual war games as a dress rehearsal for northward invasion.
Ahead of the joint exercises, U.S. forces forward-deployed a B-1B supersonic-speed bomber on Aug. 6 and a B-2 strategic bomber on Aug. 11 to an air base in Guam. The two nuclear-capable bombers and a B-52 bomber made a sortie last week to the Pacific region, flexing its nuclear muscle in an aggressive manner.
Such muscle-flexing came just four months after U.S.-South Korea springtime war games, codenamed "Key Resolve" and "Foal Eagle" ended in late April. This year's spring exercises were the largest-ever in scale.
In the past nine years, South Korea and the U. S. have maintained a so-called "strategic patience" toward the DPRK, refraining from talks with Pyongyang and demanding an unilateral action to abandon its nuclear program first.
Pyongyang made overtures in early 2015 that it would suspend nuclear tests in return for a halt of U.S.-South Korea war games ahead of last year's Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises. However, it was flatly denied by Seoul and Washington.
The flat denial was followed by the DPRK's nuclear detonation in January and the launch in February of its long-range rocket.
In retaliation, South Korea shut down Kaesong Industrial complex in the DPRK's border town, one of a few inter-Korean economic cooperation projects, and resumed propaganda broadcasts through loudspeakers in frontline units, resulting in a cutoff in all of inter-Korean communication hotlines.
Seoul's super-hardline policy got to the apex in July by agreeing with Washington to deploy one Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery in southeastern South Korea by the end of next year.
Tensions are running the highest in the region as the deployment decision made Pyongyang more aggressive and drew strong backlashes from China and Russia.
THAAD's X-band radar in South Korea can snoop on Chinese and Russian territories, breaking a strategic balance and damaging security interests of Beijing and Moscow.
South Korea is faced with risks of failing to earn cooperation from China and Russia in dealing with the peninsula's nuclear issue.
As seen in the past experiences, Seoul's super-hardline policy will never resolve the peninsula's nuclear crisis, only resulting in a vicious cycle of violence for violence.
Seoul and Washington need to stop their joint annual war games to restore inter-Korean relations and bring peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.
Efforts to resume the long-stalled six-party talks, which have been suspended since December 2008, and replace the Korean armistice with a peace treaty will be a desirable first step toward peace and stability in the region.
