S Korea, US gear up for war games to counter N Korea threat

SEOUL: In air conditioned bunkers and at military bases across South Korea, it is with keyboards - not tanks - that South Korean and the US forces will launch military exercises on Monday, denounced by North Korea as a rehearsal for war.

The Aug 21 to Aug 31 exercises involve computer simulations designed to prepare for the unthinkable: war with nuclear-capable North Korea.

The wargames, details of which are a closely guarded secret, simulate military conflict with the isolated country.

The US describes them as "defensive in nature", a term North Korean state media has dismissed as a "deceptive mask".

"The drills deal with all the steps involved in a war, of course, towards victory", said Moon Seong-mook, a retired South Korean brigadier who regularly participated in the drills until the mid-2000s.

Far from the dusty firing ranges just south of the heavily fortified border with North Korea, US and South Korean troops hunch over laptops and screens wearing earphones and camouflaged combat uniforms, according to photos of past UFG drills on the United States Forces Korea website.

The US military describes the software behind the drills as "state-of-the-art wargaming computer simulations".

There will be no field training during the exercise, according to US Forces Korea.

As part of the exercises, imagery from military satellites orbiting above the Korean peninsula, is at times used to peer deep into North Korea, said a former South Korean government official who declined to be identified.

Banks of monitors and computer graphics create simulated battlefields, complete with troop movements, according to Park Yong-han, a military expert formerly with the state-run Korea Institute for Defence Analysis.

"You can expand a certain area to see what troops are in what sort of status and where they will move," said Park.

"In the case of North Korea, we can’t see everything in real time but the military deduces the locations of North Korean troops, including the leadership during the exercise".

That focus on the North Korean leadership is what particularly infuriates Pyongyang, experts say.

"We cannot stand the fact the enemy tries to form schemes to assassinate our leadership," North Korea’s state news agency, KCNA, said in July.