Pyongyang says US included lethal weapons in drills with South Korea and is training troops to ‘behead’ Kim Jong-un.
North Korea on Tuesday greeted the start of annual US-South Korean military drills with fiery threats, vowing «merciless retaliation» for exercises Pyongyang claims are an invasion rehearsal.
North Korea’s military routinely responds to US-South Korean exercises.
Tuesday’s threat came as top US generals, including Harry Harris, the commander of US forces in the Pacific, visited South Korea.
Ties between the Koreas are almost always fraught, but anxiety is higher than normal following weeks of tit-for-tat threats between US President Donald Trump and Pyongyang in the wake of the North’s two intercontinental ballistic missile tests last month.
The US generals were to travel to the site of a contentious US missile-defense system in South Korea later on Tuesday.
The North’s military statement said it will launch an unspecified «merciless retaliation and unsparing punishment» on the United States over the Ulchi Freedom Guardian drills that began Monday for an 11-day run.
