by Yoo Seungki
SEOUL, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- South Korea and the United States need efforts to resume dialogue with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) instead of being engrossed in war games that escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula and in Northeast Asia.
Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) computer-simulated exercises kicked off on Monday, mobilizing tens of thousand of combined forces of the two allies. It is scheduled to run through next Friday, mounting the already-heightened tensions in the region further until the exercises end.
Seoul and Washington claim that their drills are defensive in nature, but this year's exercises allegedly adopts a so-called Operation Plan 5015, a wartime joint response scenario signed in June last year between the two countries.
The OPLAN 5015 involves a U.S.-South Korea preemptive strike against the DPRK, contradicting their claim to the defensiveness by themselves.
Rather, the drills are aggressive, only to raise possibility for military conflicts on the peninsula.
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