Is Seoul delaying joint drills with US to avoid antagonising Pyongyang?
South Korea cites heatwave for postponement but timing aligns with broader effort to ease tensions on the peninsula
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) in Seoul and the United States Forces Korea (USFK) said on Thursday that the Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercises would run from August 18 to 28, but 20 of the 40 scheduled field training components would now be pushed to September and conducted in staggered fashion.
The core command post exercises, conducted via computer simulations, will proceed as planned. About 18,000 South Korean troops and several thousand US personnel are expected to take part.
“The UFS ’25 will be executed on a similar scale to the previous one,” said JCS spokesperson Colonel Lee Sung-jun.
Lee cited ongoing heatwaves as the primary reason for the field training postponement, but stressed that key training components under the UFS scenario – including the deployment of US strategic assets and personnel to the Korean peninsula – would proceed as scheduled.