The USS Theodore Roosevelt will participate in joint military exercises between the United States, South Korea and Japan.
A U.S. nuclear-powered aircraft carrier arrived in South Korea for three-nation exercises aimed at stepping up military training, days after North Korea and Russia signed a mutual defense pact.
“The US Navy aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt… arrived at Busan Naval Base on the morning of June 22,” the South Korean Navy said in a statement.
“[The aircraft carrier’s arrival] “It demonstrates the strong combined defense posture of the South Korea-U.S. alliance and its firm determination to respond to growing threats from North Korea,” he said Saturday.
The aircraft carrier is expected to participate in joint exercises with South Korea and Japan this month. Pyongyang has always denounced similar combined exercises as rehearsals for an invasion.
The leaders of the three nations agreed at a summit in August 2023 to hold annual military training drills. Earlier this month, its defense chiefs announced new exercises aimed at sharpening their combined response in various areas, including air, sea and cyberspace.
The arrival of the USS Theodore Roosevelt strike group comes a day after South Korea summoned the Russian ambassador to protest the deal reached between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un this week. The pact promises mutual defense assistance in the event of war.
Putin visited North Korea for the first time in 24 years.
South Korea says the deal between the two isolated nations represents a threat to its security and warned it could consider sending weapons to Ukraine to help fight the Russian invasion in response.
North Korean soldiers have also recently engaged in activities such as laying more land mines, reinforcing tactical roads and adding what appeared to be anti-tank barriers near the border, according to the South Korean military.
The two Koreas have been locked in a tit-for-tat “balloon war,” and an activist in the South confirmed Friday that he had floated more propaganda balloons to the north.
Pyongyang has already sent more than a thousand garbage balloons south, and Kim's powerful sister, Kim Yo Jong, warned Friday that the North is likely to retaliate.
