Members of a Stryker Platoon from Hawaii unload vehicles after their arrival at Daegu Air base, south of Seoul, March 18, 2007. The South Korean-US joint drills are due to begin on March 25, with hundreds of thousands of South Korean troops and some 29,000 US soldiers based there and abroad taking part, along with a US aircraft carrier backed by cruisers and destroyers. South Korea and the United States have defended the annual exercise as being purely defensive. (Xinhua/AFP) |