US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen is to visit South Korea to discuss the crisis on the Korean Peninsula with the country's officials.
The top US military commander is scheduled to hold talks with his South Korean counterpart General Han Min Koo on Wednesday amid growing tensions over North Korea's shelling of a South Korean island last month, the South Korean Yonhap news agency reported.
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday in Washington that Mullen is "to enhance coordination on strategic deterrence" during his visit.
The announcement for the visit came as South Korea launched major live-fire military drills on Monday in the Yellow Sea. The drills are scheduled to take place off all three coasts of the Korean Peninsula until Friday.
The exercise was launched in the wake of North Korea's bombardment of the South's Yeonpyeong Island on November 23, which killed two soldiers and two civilians.
The North called the drills an effort to trigger a war and warned the South against holding more joint military exercises with Washington.
The North has warned that the situation is reaching an uncontrollably extreme level. It says a war between the two Koreas will seriously affect peace and security not only on the Korean Peninsula but in the entire region.
Pyongyang accuses US President Barack Obama of plotting with regional allies to topple the country's government, insisting that its nuclear program is a deterrent against US forces in the region.
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