Seoul, South Korea CNN —As tensions with North Korea spike, South Korea will hold its first nationwide civil defense drill in six years later this month, requiring most of the country’s 51 million residents to practice evacuating to shelters or underground safe spaces during the 20-minute exercise. “We expect to strengthen the response capacity of the nation through a practical drill reflecting the aspects of provocations of North Korea,” Prime Minister Han Duck-soo said in a news release this week. Many South Koreans have become resigned to the fact that much of the population would only have minutes to respond to any possible North Korean missile or airstrike. South Koreans have long become used to periods of fractious relations with the North, but the current level of tensions are especially high. Han, the South Korean prime minister, said the civil defense drill would be held in conjunction with large-scale US-South Korea military exercises that have drawn sharp criticism from Pyongyang in the past.

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