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US, South Korea begin biggest joint military drills since Trump-Kim summit
- The drills known as Ulchi Freedom Shield are expected to involve thousands of military personnel, the biggest such exercises in about five years
- An angry response is almost certain from North Korea, which for decades has assailed joint exercises as a prelude to invasion and nuclear war
The United States and South Korea began their biggest joint military exercise in about five years on Monday after a hiatus on large-scale exercises that failed to entice North Korea’s Kim Jong-un to make concessions in disarmament talks.
The drills known as Ulchi Freedom Shield are expected to involve thousands of military personnel and will run for two weeks. The US and South Korea have said the drills are defensive in nature and will include exercises to coordinate forces in response to an invasion from North Korea. Although official details have yet to be released, the drills are likely to involve warships, aircraft and armoured vehicles.
An angry response is almost certain from North Korea, which for decades has assailed joint exercises as a prelude to invasion and nuclear war. Pyongyang has turned up the heat in its rhetoric in the past few weeks, indicating it could get back to the provocations that were largely put on hold as it battled a Covid-19 outbreak first revealed in May, and which it said ended earlier this month. A South Korea Unification Ministry spokesman said on Monday that Seoul had not immediately detected any unusual activities or signs from the North.
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South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol, a conservative who took office in May, pledged to restore large-scale joint drills with the US to bolster security against North Korea. His office said last month that the two allies would return to practising war scenarios in-person on land, at sea and in the air, replacing training over the past several years that used computerised command-and-control simulations.
The US, South Korea and Japan conducted a joint missile defence exercise off Hawaii earlier this month. The public display of unity from the two US allies is an improvement from a deterioration of ties in recent years over disputes stemming from Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial rule over the Korean peninsula.
Yoon’s predecessor, Moon Jae-in, was wary of angering Pyongyang and making public military manoeuvres that could sour ties with China or his rapprochement with North Korea.
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North Korea has sought for decades to leverage the prospect of disarmament talks to scale back US-South Korean military drills, something which former President Donald Trump agreed to during his summits with Kim from 2018.
Kim and Trump met three times with no concrete results to roll back North Korea’s nuclear weapons arsenal, which only grew larger as the talks sputtered. Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of the leader, has rejected a disarmament-for-aid deal offered by Yoon as “stupid” and dismissed the idea of engaging with Seoul.
The US, Japan and South Korea have all warned that North Korea is readying for its first nuclear test since 2017. Pyongyang is trying to build warheads small enough for tactical devices to hit American allies in Asia and increase the power of weapons that would be carried by intercontinental ballistic missiles to the US.
Any display of North Korea’s weapons would serve as a reminder of the security problems posed by the regime that have simmered as the attention of President Joe Biden’s administration focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Last week’s launches of two suspected cruise missiles extended a record pace in North Korean missile testing in 2022, which has involved more than 30 ballistic launches, including the country’s first demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles in nearly five years.
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Since most US troops are stationed in South Korea for about a year, drills are typically the only time for most of them to do real-world, widespread training with their allies. Soldiers and equipment from bases in the US and Japan at times were integrated into the operations, while a US aircraft group has sailed offshore for many incarnations.
The US still has about 28,500 troops in South Korea and military leaders on both sides have said drills are essential to prepare for any provocations by Pyongyang. North Korea positions large portions of its million-man military near the border drawn up when the cease fire took hold.
The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise will improve South Korea’s “all-out warfare capability,” its Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement last week.
Additional reporting by Associated Press
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