S. Korea marks Korean War victory despite N.K. criticism

South Korea went ahead Monday with an annual event marking a landmark military operation carried out in this port city during the 1950-53 Korean War, despite North Korea’s denouncement of the ceremony.

A day earlier, North Korea’s Peaceful Reunification of Korea, a government body handling affairs with Seoul, denounced the annual event marking the Incheon landing operation as an “unpardonable challenge” to the peace-promoting philosophy of the Incheon Asian Games as well as an “unbearable provocation” to the regime.

The regional sports event is scheduled to kick off in the same city on Friday for a 16-day run, involving a 273-member delegation from the communist country among many more foreign athletes.

Earlier on Monday, Seoul’s Defense Ministry held the commemorative event as scheduled on the Yellow Sea island of Wolmi, which included a 20-minute simulation of the historic naval operation 64 years ago.

The Incheon landing mission, an amphibious operation led by U.S. Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur, is celebrated as one of the decisive Korean War battles here. It helped the South recapture its capital Seoul from invading North Korean forces.

Some 2,200 military officials and servicemen as well as Incheon city officials and war veterans attended the event this year, with

10 South Korean and U.S. warships and dozens of aircraft and armored vehicles mobilized for the reenactment of the naval operation held in waters off the island.

Following the event, Seoul’s Defense Ministry rejected North Korea’s criticism, saying the event was unrelated to the Incheon Asian Games.

“The 64th Incheon landing operation war victory event is an annual event. Therefore it has nothing to do with the Asian Games,” Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said in a briefing.

South Korea has carried out the Incheon landing operation simulation every year since 2008 though Pyongyang has often denounced the event as a provocation.

The two Koreas are technically at war as the Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. (Yonhap)