The drills could provoke an angry response from North Korea, which has stepped up its weapons-testing activity at a record pace this year while repeatedly threatening confrontations with Seoul and Washington amid a prolonged diplomatic stalemate. The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises will continue until September 1 in South Korea and include field exercises involving aircraft, warships, tanks and potentially tens of thousands of troops. While Washington and Seoul describe their drills as defensive, North Korea portrays them as invasion rehearsals and has used them to justify its nuclear weapons and missile development. The Ulchi Freedom Shield, which began alongside a four-day South Korean civil defense training program led by government officials, reportedly includes joint attack simulation exercises, front-line reinforcement of weapons and fuel, and removal of weapons of mass destruction.
The exercises are very “challenging”: Trump
The allies will also train for drone strikes and other new developments in warfare introduced during Russia’s war in Ukraine, and exercise joint military-civilian responses to attacks on seaports, airports and large industrial facilities such as semiconductor factories. The United States and South Korea have in previous years canceled some of their regular exercises and reduced others to computer simulations to make room for the Donald Trump administration’s diplomacy with North Korea and later because of concerns about COVID-19. Trump’s decision in early 2018 to cancel the drills — which the then-president deemed too expensive and “provocative” for North Korea — was later criticized as an unnecessary concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by former national security adviser John. Bolton. In his book The Room Where It Happened, Bolton said both he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo were surprised by Trump’s decision, which came without consulting the Cabinet. Diplomatic efforts collapsed after the second meeting between Trump and Kim in early 2019. The Americans then rejected North Korea’s demands for significant relief from US-led crippling sanctions in exchange for the dismantling of an aging nuclear complex, which would it 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 American pressure. The South Korean military did not disclose the number of South Korean and US troops participating in the Ulchi Freedom Shield, but portrayed the training as a message of strength. Seoul’s defense ministry said last week that the Ulchi Freedom Shield is “normalizing” large-scale training and field exercises between the allies to help strengthen their alliance. Before training was shut down or reduced, the United States and South Korea held major joint exercises each spring and summer in South Korea.
Tens of thousands of soldiers are involved
Spring drills involved live-fire exercises involving a wide range of land, air and sea assets and typically involved around 10,000 US and 200,000 Korean troops. Tens of thousands of allied troops took part in the summer exercises, which consisted mainly of computer simulations to refine joint decision-making and planning, although South Korea’s military has emphasized reviving field training this year. The drills follow North Korea’s rejection last week of South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s “bold” offer of economic benefits in exchange for denuclearization steps, accusing Seoul of recycling proposals Pyongyang has long rejected. South Korean protesters hold a rally on Monday in front of the Korean War Memorial in Seoul against joint military exercises between their country and the United States. (Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty Images) Kim Yo Jong, the increasingly powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, described Yoon’s proposal as foolish and stressed that the North has no intention of giving up an arsenal that her brother clearly sees as the stronger guarantee of its survival. He also mocked US-South Korean military capabilities to monitor the North’s missile activity, insisting the South misunderstood the launch site of the North’s latest missile tests on Wednesday last week, hours before Yun used a news conference to urge Pyongyang to return to diplomacy. Kim Yo Jong’s statement came a week after she warned of “deadly” retaliation against South Korea over a recent COVID-19 outbreak in North Korea, which Pyongyang dubiously claims was caused by leaflets and other items floated by southern activists . There are concerns that the threat foreshadows a provocation that could include a nuclear or missile test or even border skirmishes, and that the North may try to escalate tensions sometime around the allied exercises. Last week’s launches of two suspected cruise missiles extended a record pace of North Korea’s 2022 missile tests, which have included more than 30 ballistic launches, including the country’s first intercontinental ballistic missile displays in nearly five years.
