U.S., South Korea and Japan open joint air and naval exercise– japantoday.com
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The United States, South Korea and Japan opened an air and naval exercise off a South Korean island Monday in their latest joint drill condemned by North Korea as a “reckless show of strength.”
The exercise called Freedom Edge is aimed at strengthening the countries’ combined operational capabilities in the sea, air and cyberspace and is necessary to counter North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile threats, South Korea’s Defense Ministry said.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said the exercise will include U.S. Marine and Air Force aerial assets and feature enhanced ballistic-missile and air-defense drills, medical evacuations and maritime operations training, making it “the most advanced demonstration of trilateral defense cooperation to date.”
The exercise off South Korea’s southern Jeju Island runs through Friday.
The powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un earlier condemned the drills in state media, saying they show the countries’ confrontational stance toward the North.
“The reckless show of strength made by them in real action in the vicinity of the DPRK, which is the wrong place, will inevitably bring bad results to themselves,” Kim Yo Jong said, using the initials of North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
