The government in Pyongyang, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), said the exercises amounted to a “a de facto declaration of war” and an end to the 1953 cease-fire that ended the three-year U.S.-led Korean war. The north Korean army “reserves the right to undertake a pre-emptive action for self-defense,” reported the Korean Central News Agency August 22.

Currently, some 29,500 U.S. troops are stationed in south Korea. U.S. troops have been based in the south since 1953 with the aim of overturning the socialized property relations established in the DPRK. At that time, a United Nations-sanctioned partition divided the Korean Peninsula along the 38th parallel, with a workers state in the north and capitalist social relations in the south.

“Ulji Focus Lens” was initiated in the mid-1970s as one of four joint military drills between the United States and south Korean armed forces. A press release of the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said that in 1994 the line of attack of the war games went beyond the 38th parallel for the first time. In 1998 they carried out a simulated all-out invasion of the north, and in 2002 they conducted mock preemptive attacks on the DPRK’s nuclear facilities.

In July, the UN Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution condemning north Korea for testing several ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan earlier that month. The resolution called for the suspension of “all activities related to its ballistic missile program” and restoring “a moratorium on missile launching.” It demanded that UN member states “prevent the procurement of missile or missile-related items, materials, goods, or technology being transferred to DPRK’s missile program.” It also called for preventing “the transfer of any financial resources” related to DPRK’s nuclear program.

“The U.S. military threat to the DPRK is not a fiction but a reality at hand,” said the August 21 KCNA press release.

“The tense situation on the Korean Peninsula has not yet led to an all-out war because the DPRK has kept the balance of strength by building a powerful war deterrent to cope with the U.S. threat,” it said, referring to the development of long-range missiles in north Korea. “It was quite right for the army and people of the DPRK to have bolstered the war deterrent for self-defense in every way.”
 
 
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