NORTH KOREA fired two missiles into the sea yesterday as the United States and South Korea kicked off joint military drills.

    The annual exercises always trigger a surge in military tensions and warlike rhetoric on the divided peninsula.

    The missile launches came with a stern warning from the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) that this year’s military drills would bring the peninsula “towards the brink of war.”

    The South Korean defense ministry said the two Scud missiles were fired from the western port city of Nampo and fell into the sea off the east coast — a distance of nearly 500 kilometers.

    U.N. resolutions prohibit any ballistic missile test by North Korea and ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok said Pyongyang appeared intent on triggering a “security crisis.”

    “We will respond sternly and strongly to any provocation,” Kim told reporters.

    The Japanese Government said it had issued a strong protest to the North given the danger such missile launches posed to aviation and shipping.

    Missile tests have long been a preferred North Korean method of expressing anger and displeasure with what it views as confrontational behavior by the South and its allies.

    “The situation on the Korean Peninsula is again inching close to the brink of a war,” a spokesman for the KPA General Staff was quoted as saying by the North’s official KCNA news agency.

    “The only means to cope with the aggression and war by the U.S. imperialists and their followers is neither dialogue nor peace. They should be dealt with only by merciless strikes.”

    The largest element of the two South Korea-U.S. drills that began yesterday is Foal Eagle, an eight-week exercise involving air, ground and naval field training, with around 200,000 Korean and 3,700 U.S. troops.

    The other is a week-long, largely computer-simulated joint drill called Key Resolve.

    Seoul and Washington insist the exercises are defense-based in nature, but they are regularly condemned by Pyongyang as provocative rehearsals for invasion.

    The KPA spokesman said North Korea would respond in kind to any act of conventional, nuclear or cyber warfare.

    (SD-Agencies)