US quadruples number of troops for joint South Korea drill: South Korean min.

The number of the US forces that will participate in an annual joint military exercise with South Korea this year will be four times as many as the figure last year, amid a recent uptick in tensions with North Korea over its recent nuclear and long-range rocket tests.

Washington will dispatch 15,000 troops to the annual computer-simulated “Key Resolve” drill, up from 3,700 last year, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-goo as saying on Thursday.

The minister also added that Seoul, too, will increase the number of the troops it will be sending to the war games next month.

Key Resolve, which lasted 10 days in 2015, usually begins simultaneously with a field exercise known as Foal Eagle, another joint military maneuver that lasts about 50 days.

Pyongyang regularly slams the joint US-South Korea military exercises as rehearsals for war on North Korea.

Following the start of the drills last year, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called on his country’s army to prepare for war with the US and its allies.

The Korean Peninsula has not seen calm since the Korean War of early 1950s. The military confrontation back then ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty, meaning that the two Koreas effectively continue to be at war.

In the tensions that emerge too frequently, the US has been taking South Korea’s side. Washington says Pyongyang is after developing long-range missiles that can carry nuclear warheads and can reach the US. North Korea says its adversaries, including the US, seek to bring Pyongyang down, and it is thus strengthening itself against hostile countries.

In January, North Korea carried out a nuclear test, followed by a long-range rocket launch in early February. Washington characteristically condemned both.

North Korea declared itself a nuclear power in 2005 and, apart from the January recent nuclear test, has carried out three atomic weapon tests — in 2006, 2009, 2013.

In a parliament speech on Tuesday, South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Seoul would take “stronger and more effective” measures to make North Korea realize its nuclear ambitions will result in accelerating its “regime collapse,” only to reaffirm Pyongyang’s concerns.

Seoul and Washington have also arranged for the deployment of advanced US missiles inside South Korea.

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