North Korea: Talks at Risk if US-South Korea Exercises Continue

US military exercises with South Korea have long been a source of tensions with North Korea, and threaten to be again, with reports that the US is preparing to hold a new round of exercises with South Korea, which North Korean officials are calling a “rehearsal of war.“

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry is unhappy with this plan, saying that the US exercise could put plans for future nuclear diplomacy at risk, and further raise tensions with another sense that the US actions are the exact opposite of their stated diplomatic goals.

Perhaps a bigger issue than the US once again derailing negotiations, North Korea also suggested that they might lift their own moratorium on nuclear and missile testing, and return the situation to where it was before the talks began.

Whether that is a realistic threat or not is unclear. It makes sense in that the US and North Korea saw their respective freezing of wargames and weapons testing and confidence-building measures, but North Korea would seem to have little need to go back to testing its already proven nuclear program, and may just be threatening it to try to deter the US from going back to conducting the huge mock invasions of North Korea all the time.