In an article entitled “In drills, U.S., South Korea practice striking North’s nuclear plants, leaders”, written by Anna Fifield and carried by The Washington Post, the author describes the US-South Korean drills: “The exercises will revolve around a wartime plan, OPLAN 5015, adopted by South Korea and the United States last year. The plan has not been made public but, according to reports in the South Korean media, includes a contingency for surgical strikes against the North’s nuclear weapons and missile facilities, as well as “decapitation” raids to take out North Korea’s leaders. The JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported that Kim Jong Un would be among them.”
According to the author, “The exercises come at a particularly tense time, with the international community — especially the United States and South Korea — looking to punish Pyongyang for its recent nuclear test and missile launch”.
The author then wrote about the North’s response:
“We have a military operation plan of our style to liberate South Korea and strike the U.S. mainland ratified by our dignified supreme headquarters,” the North’s National Defense Commission said in its statement, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. It said it had deployed “offensive means” to strike South Korea and “U.S. imperialist aggressor forces bases in the Asia-Pacific region and the U.S. mainland.”
Alexei Voskresenky, Dean of the School of Political Affairs at the MGIMO University and editor-in chief of Comparative Politics magazine (studio guest); Brian Yeung, independent contributor to Chinese and English media in Hong Kong; and Bryce Swerhun, expert at the City University of Hong Kong joined the discussion.
