Amid growing tensions in the Korean peninsula, over 2,000 US troops have arrived in South Korea to take part in a joint military exercise. The joint US-South Korean exercises will be largest military drills to be staged on the Korean Peninsula and are both a warning to Pyongyang as well as an effort to reassure the ‘jittery public‘ in the South. Following recent UN sanctions and citing growing enemy threats, the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un ordered his military forces to prepare for using nuclear weapons. Press TV reports: According to US Marine officials, accompanying the troops in the war games are the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard and the amphibious dock landing ships Ashland and Germantown. The annual exercises, slated to begin on Monday, include two parallel annual drills – Key Resolve and Foal Eagle – and involve over 300,000 South Korean troops and 15,000 US personnel. During the exercise American and Korean forces will carry out amphibious operations for disaster relief or wartime missions, said Marine Corps spokesman 2nd Lieutenant Joshua Hays. Pyongyang regularly condemns the joint military exercises between Washington and Seoul as rehearsals for war against North Korea. The North conducted its fourth nuclear test in [...]