SEOUL -- South Korea and the United States plan to hold two days of joint naval exercises off the east coast this week that will involve the U.S. aircraft carrier USS Nimitz, a government source said Sunday.
The 97,000-ton Nimitz will leave the port of Busan on Monday morning for the exercises with South Korea's Navy, the source said. South Korea will mobilize the Aegis-equipped destroyer King Sejong and the DDH-II class destroyer Chungmugong Yi Sunshin for the exercises. Aegis destroyers of the two countries plan to focus on missile detection and anti-submarine maneuvers.
On Saturday, North Korea yapped about denounced the arrival of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. Pyongyang's Secretariat of the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of Korea described the arrival as "an open threat and blackmail against the DPRK (North Korea) and a grave military provocation to unleash a nuclear war against it at any cost on the Korean Peninsula." |