SEOUL (AP) - U.S. and South Korean forces will conduct a joint exercise next month, the U.S. military said Friday, announcing this year's date for an annual drill that North Korea has branded a rehearsal for invasion.
The Ulchi Focus Lens drill, set for Aug. 20-31, is largely a computer-simulated war game "designed to train, evaluate and improve combined and joint procedures, plans and systems for conducting operations critical to the defense of the peninsula," the U.S. military command said in a statement.
The two countries have staged the exercise since 1975.
North Korea has harshly condemned the drill and other exercises in South Korea involving U.S. forces as preparations to invade it. Last year, Pyongyang denounced the exercise as a de facto declaration of war against it.
The U.S. military notified the North of the exercise plan earlier Friday, said Kim Yong-kyu, a spokesman for the U.S. military.
The war game will involve about 10,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea and abroad, and a "small number" of U.S. personnel will actually travel to South Korea for the drill, Kim said.
About 28,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in a cease-fire, leaving the two Koreas still technically at war.