US, South Korea begin biggest joint military drills since Trump-Kim summit

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.

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.

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.