War games

John Glionna of the Los Angeles Times has a write-up on the Key Resolve-Foal Eagle drills, the joint ROK-US exercises going on in South Korea (with a few small photogallery) over the next twelve days. The BBC has its own small photogallery.

The exercises will involve 26,000 troops, half of whom are stationed outside of South Korea, several U.S. destoryers, and aircraft carrier John Stennis. 

These are the same exercises that have led North Korea to ratchet up tensions by threatening South Korean civilian aircraft. They also prevented 726 South Koreans employed at the Kaesŏng Industrial complex (개성공업지구/開城工業地區) from crossing into North Korea to their work getting out of North Korea. [Update: They're now being allowed to leave.]

They also severed the inter-Korean military hotline. 

(North Korea's belligerence shows that it's true what they say: Koreans are individually kind but collectively rude.)

[left: North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong-il being individually kind to then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.]