SEOUL, Aug 25, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – South Korea Sunday began two days of war
games to practise defending disputed islands off its east coast against an
unlikely attack from Japan, further stoking tensions between the Asian
neighbours.
The annual drills come just days after Seoul terminated a military
intelligence-sharing pact with Tokyo, with the countries at loggerheads over
Japan’s use of forced labour during World War II.
The two-day exercise will involve warships and aircraft, the South Korean
navy said in a text message without providing more detail.
The drill — re-named “East Sea territory defence training” — will
solidify the military’s resolve to defend the Dokdo islands and the area
surrounding the Sea of Japan, the navy said.
While a Japanese attack is deemed highly unlikely, South Korea first
staged the drills in 1986 and has conducted them twice a year — usually in
June and December.
The delayed exercise comes as tensions with neighbouring Japan continue.
Seoul has controlled the rocky islets in the Sea of Japan since 1945 when
Tokyo’s 35-year colonial rule over the Korean peninsula ended.
Tokyo also claims the islands and accuses South Korea of occupying them
illegally.
The two nations are both market economies, democracies and US allies, and
both are threatened by nuclear-armed North Korea.
But the two neighbours have been embroiled in intensifying trade and
diplomatic disputes in recent weeks, following a run of South Korean court
rulings ordering Japanese firms to pay for forced labour during World War II.
The series of tit-for-tat measures that began in July after Japan imposed
new restrictions on exports crucial to South Korean tech firms has seen Seoul
and Tokyo remove each other from their lists of trusted trade partners.