Involved in these war exercises will be more than 30,000 U.S. troops including at least 3,000 from overseas bases and 56 000 troops of the puppet army of south Korea and other huge armed forces of aggression and war hardware.

Rodong Sinmun Monday observes in a bylined commentary in this regard:

The announcement of the plan for this saber-rattling is an open military threat to the DPRK and a blatant challenge to the peace on the Korean Peninsula.

They informed the DPRK of the plan, claiming they are "command post" exercises and aimed at "coping with threat". But this is nothing but a cunning artifice to cover up the provocative and aggressive nature of the saber-rattling.

It is the plan of the puppet warmongers to stage the drill of "stabilizing the north and an operation for transfer to civilian administration" to cope with "contingency" while conducting the above-said maneuvers this year. They are contemplating letting the "agency for five provinces of the north" and the "committee for five provinces of the north", bodies for "unification of systems," take part in the drill for the first time. This fact suffices to clearly show the sinister goal and aggressive nature of the projected joint military exercises. It is preposterous, indeed, for them to claim this saber-rattling is aimed to cope with the "threat" from someone.