REUTERS/Kim Hong-JiA
South Korean and a US Marine take positions as amphibious assault
vehicles of the South Korean Marine Corps fire smoke bombs during a
US-South Korea joint landing operation drill in Pohang, South Korea,
March 12, 2016.Operation Foal Eagle 2016, which runs from March 7 to April 30, is a massive joint US-South Korean military exercise held in North Korea's backyard.
The operation runs contemporaneously as another US military exercise in South Korea, Operation Key Resolve, which starts March 7 and ends March 18.
The operations in total involve about 17,000 US troops, along with an astonishing 300,000 of their South Korean counterparts.
North Korea views the drills as aggressive and denounces them each year.
Pyongyang has ratcheted up the rhetoric and warned that its armed forces "holding tightly the arms to annihilate the enemies with towering hatred for them are waiting for the dignified Supreme Command to issue an order to launch a preemptive strike of justice."
On March 9, North Korea launched two ballistic missiles into the Sea of Japan. And on Monday, Pyongyang claimed it could wipe out Manhattan with a nuclear bomb. These photos highlight the exercises going on in South Korea:
Operation Foal Eagle is carried out in the spirit of the 1953 South Korea-US Mutual Defense Treaty, which obligates the US to intervene if the north ever invaded South Korea again.
The bilateral exercise is conducted by South Korea and the US. It allows the two nations to practice land, air, and naval operations
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