North Korea fired two missiles into the sea on Monday and vowed "merciless" retaliation as the US and South Korea kicked off joint military drills denounced by Pyongyang as recklessly confrontational.
The annual exercises always
trigger a surge in military tensions and warlike rhetoric on the divided
peninsula, and analysts saw the North's missile tests as a prelude to a
concerted campaign of sabre rattling.
"And
if there is a particularly sharp escalation, we could see the North
orchestrating some kind of clash on the maritime border," said Jeung
Young-Tae, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in
Seoul.
The missile launches came with a stern warning from the
nuclear-armed North Korean People's Army (KPA) that this year's military
drills would bring the peninsula "towards the brink of war."
The
South Korean defence ministry said the two Scud missiles were fired
from the western port city of Nampo and fell into the sea off the east
coast -- a distance of nearly 500 kilometres (310 miles).
UN
resolutions prohibit any ballistic missile test by North Korea and
ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok said Pyongyang appeared intent on
triggering a "security crisis."
"We will respond sternly and strongly to any provocation," Kim told reporters.
The
Japanese government said it had issued a strong protest to the North
given the danger such missile launches posed to aviation and shipping.
Missile
tests have long been a preferred North Korean method of expressing
anger and displeasure with what it views as confrontational behaviour by
the South and its allies.
- 'Brink of war' -
"The
situation on the Korean peninsula is again inching close to the brink
of a war," a spokesman for the KPA General Staff was quoted as saying
Monday by the North's official KCNA news agency.
"The only means to cope with the
aggression and war by the US imperialists and their followers is
neither dialogue nor peace. They should be dealt with only by merciless
strikes."
North Korea has
threatened attacks, including nuclear strikes, on the US before,
although it has never demonstrated a missile capability that would
encompass the US mainland.
The
largest element of the two South Korea-US drills that began Monday is
Foal Eagle, an eight-week exercise involving air, ground and naval field
training, with around 200,000 Korean and 3,700 US troops.
The other is a week-long, largely computer-simulated joint drill called Key Resolve.
Seoul
and Washington insist the exercises are defence-based in nature, but
they are regularly condemned by Pyongyang as provocative rehearsals for
invasion.
- Retaliation threat -
The KPA spokesman said North Korea would respond in kind to any act of conventional, nuclear or cyber warfare.
"In
case even a single shell drops on any place over which the sovereignty
of the DPRK (North Korea) is exercised, it will promptly take
counteractions," he said
North Korea has carried out three nuclear tests -- in 2006, 2009 and 2013.
In
January, the North offered a moratorium on further tests if this year's
joint drills were cancelled -- a proposal rejected by Washington as an
"implicit threat" to carry out a fourth atomic detonation.
Analyst Jeung said Pyongyang was unlikely to conduct a fourth test just to protest against the exercises."Nuclear tests carry more significance than that," he said, noting that the North's testing schedule was primarily driven by technical development.
"On the other hand, there is the chance of a mid- or long-range missile test," Jeung told AFP.
"I
would say that a demonstration that it could deliver a nuclear warhead
would be more threatening to the world than an actual nuclear test," he
added.
A new research report
by US experts published last week estimated that North Korea could be on
track to have an arsenal of 100 nuclear weapons by 2020.
In
a further sign of rising tensions, the North Korean state-run website,
Uriminzokkiri, warned Monday of a fierce response to any attempt by
South Korean activists to float anti-Pyongyang leaflets across the
border by balloon.
"The response might not just be a few shots of gunfire but cannons or missiles," the website said.