This article originally appeared at Anti-Media.
East Asia — As journalists, analysts, and world leaders wait to see what transpires at the much-hyped summit between Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping this Friday, Asian media reported Monday that the U.S. and its allies in East Asia are conducting their first ever joint anti-submarine drills. They are aimed at coordinating an “effective response” to the purportedly belligerent North Korea.
“Japan, South Korea and the U.S. have conducted the first joint anti-submarine warfare (ASW) drills involving the three countries,” The Japan Times reports, “amid North Korea’s growing submarine-launched ballistic missile threat.”
The drills, which will last three days, will make use of a Japanese helicopter-carrying naval destroyer, a South Korean destroyer and helicopter, and a U.S. Aegis-equipped destroyer and patrol plane.
The Japan Times article goes on to point out that recently, South Korea and Japan have put aside historical differences in the name of regional security:
“In November, Japan and South Korea inked an agreement to share military intelligence on North Korea amid Pyongyang’s ramped-up nuclear and missile programs. The general security of military information agreement (GSOMIA) was widely seen as a breakthrough between the historical rivals and U.S. allies amid the North’s saber rattling.
“Together with the U.S., the two countries have beefed-up their defense cooperation, including through ballistic missile detection and via tracking drills.”
With such an agreement in place, and with the three allies now holding first-of-their-kind drills, it appears the coalition of the United States, Japan, and South Korea has officially been locked into place.
And the narrative supposedly justifying that coalition isn’t letting up a bit.
On Tuesday, a Reuters piece described the Northeast Asia Special Region, an area on the border between China and North Korea that was intended to be a thriving economic zone. It was supposed to be complete with “golf courses, blueberry fields, horse riding, logistics hubs and trade in everything from timber to textiles” and was intended to link the two nations “via air, road and freight train routes.”
More accurately, Reuters described how the zone now sits unfinished, with equipment collecting dust. The reason for this, the news service makes clear, is the blustering of North Korea:
“The ultimate aim is export products from both countries to Chongjin to Japan, South Korea, the United States and Europe — an aspiration thwarted by tightening global sanctions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.”
Everyone would get along fine, Reuters says, if North Korea would just calm its jets.
NBC News certainly isn’t doing anything to relax the situation. On Monday, they ran an interview they conducted with an alleged North Korean defector. As one might guess, he had few nice things to say about the North and leader Kim Jong-un.
The comments of the man, Thae Yong Ho, affirm everything the mainstream narrative would have you believe. One, in particular — which takes the narrative to its logical conclusion — perhaps best sums up the article’s mood.
“Kim Jong Un is a man who can do anything beyond the normal imagination,” he said, adding that “the final and the real solution to the North Korean nuclear issue is to eliminate Kim Jong Un from the post.”
