The US and South Korea yesterday began their biggest combined military training in years as they heighten their defense posture against the growing North Korean nuclear threat.
The drills could draw an angry response from North Korea, which has dialed up its weapons testing activity to a record pace this year while repeatedly threatening conflicts with Seoul and Washington amid a prolonged stalemate in diplomacy.
The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises are to continue through Friday next week in South Korea and include field exercises involving aircraft, warships, tanks and potentially tens of thousands of troops.
Photo: EPA-EFE
While Washington and Seoul describe their exercises as defensive, North Korea portrays them as invasion rehearsals, and has used them to justify its nuclear weapons and missiles development.
Ulchi Freedom Shield, which started along with a four-day South Korean civil defense training program led by government employees, would reportedly include exercises simulating joint attacks, frontline reinforcements of arms and fuel, and removals of weapons of mass destruction.
The allies would also train for drone attacks and other new developments in warfare shown during Russia’s war on Ukraine and practice joint military-civilian responses to attacks on seaports, airports and major industrial facilities such as semiconductor factories.
The US and South Korea in past years had canceled some of their regular drills and downsized others to computer simulations to create space for the former US president Donald Trump administration’s diplomacy with North Korea and because of COVID-19 concerns.
Tensions have grown since the collapse of the second meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in early 2019. The US then rejected North Korean demands for a major release of crippling US-led sanctions in exchange for dismantling an aging nuclear complex, which would have amounted to a partial surrender of the North’s nuclear capabilities.
Kim has since vowed to bolster his nuclear deterrent in the face of “gangster-like” US pressure.
South Korea’s military has not revealed the number of South Korean and US troops participating in Ulchi Freedom Shield, but has portrayed the training as a message of strength.
The South Korean Ministry of National Defense last week said that Ulchi Freedom Shield “normalizes” large-scale training and field exercises between the allies to help bolster their alliance and strengthen their defense posture against the evolving North Korean threat.
Before being shelved or downsized, the US and South Korea held major joint exercises every spring and summer in South Korea.
The spring drills had included live-fire drills involving a broad range of land, air and sea assets and usually involved about 10,000 US and 200,000 South Korean troops.
Tens of thousands of allied troops participated in the summertime drills, which mainly consisted of computer simulations to hone joint decisionmaking and planning, although South Korea’s military has emphasized the revival of field training this year.
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