U.S. Military to Begin Drills to Evacuate Americans From South Korea [View all]

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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/16/world/asia/us-drills-evacuate-civilians.html

SEOUL, South Korea — The United States military said on Monday that it would practice evacuating noncombatant Americans out of South Korea in the event of war and other emergencies, as the two allies began a joint naval exercise amid heightened tensions with North Korea.

It has conducted similar evacuation exercises for decades. But with fears rising in the South that the United States might be preparing for military action against the North, the American military issued a rare news release on Monday stressing that the noncombatant evacuation exercise was a “routinely scheduled” drill.

The drill, known as Courageous Channel, is scheduled from next Monday through Friday and is aimed at preparing American “service members and their families to respond to a wide range of crisis management events such as noncombatant evacuation and natural or man-made disasters,” the United States military said in a statement.

The South Korean government of President Moon Jae-in has repeatedly warned that it opposes a military solution to the North Korean nuclear crisis because it could quickly escalate into a full-blown war in which Koreans would suffer the most.

United States officials said they were hoping for a diplomatic end to the crisis, but would not rule out military action. And in recent months, as North Korea has accelerated its nuclear and missile programs, President Trump has issued a series of comments that have stoked fears among South Koreans of possible war on the Korean Peninsula. He has threatened to “totally destroy” or rain down “fire and fury” on the North, and has also said that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson was “wasting his time” trying to negotiate with the country.