South Korea and the United States began their largest combined military drills in five years, Monday, to sharpen their readiness at a time when North Korea is ramping up missile and nuclear threats.
The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, scheduled to continue until Sept. 1, mark the resumption of the two allies’ full-scale field exercises involving fighter jets, warships, tanks and potentially tens of thousands of troops.
The participants will rehearse scenarios, such as responding to North Korea’s attacks on key industrial facilities including an airport, a semiconductor factory or a nuclear power plant. The Ministry of Defense’s report to the National Assembly shows that their training script reflects many of the actual combat situations being experienced in Ukraine, which has been defending its territory against Russia for more than six months now.
Since 2017, such exercises had been put on hold because former President Moon Jae-in and former U.S. President Donald Trump believed they were too expensive and too provocative to the North. Instead, the two leaders stepped up diplomatic efforts to achieve the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk and Boeing AH-64 Apache helicopters prepare for an
exercise at Camp Humphreys, a U.S. Army garrison in Pyeongtaek,
Gyeonggi Province, Monday. YonhapDuring the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, there will be 13 combined field training programs, as well as a full operational capability assessment, a key procedure for the envisioned conditions-based transfer of wartime operational control from Washington to Seoul.
The same day, the government also started the annual Ulchi civil defense training program, led by government employees for the next four days.
“We can protect the lives of the people and national security only through realistic drills. Preserving peace on the Korean Peninsula is built on our airtight defense preparedness,” President Yoon Suk-yeol said at a Cabinet meeting at his office in Seoul. “Today’s war is different from the one of the past. It may involve cyberattacks on key facilities such as ports, airports and (the manufacturing plants of) semiconductors or attacks on the supply chains of important materials, with the aim of neutralizing our war capabilities.”
In fact, during the last five years, the two allies’ regular military drills were canceled or reduced to just computer simulations, while North Korea tested new types of weapons from their arsenal as part of its weapons development program, including hypersonic as well as short-range, intermediate-range and long-range ballistic missiles, which require new contingency plans and new drills.
Although the two allies made it clear that the Ulchi Freedom training exercise is defensive in nature, it is expected to draw an aggressive reaction from the North, which is likely to be ready for its seventh nuclear weapons test.
Soldiers attach South Korean national flags to military vehicles before an
exercise in Paju, a city near the border with North Korea, Monday. YonhapThe exercise comes several days after North Korea rejected South Korea’s offer to give up its nuclear ambitions in phases, in return for a number of economic benefits.
Kim Yo-jong, the powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, called Yoon’s proposal “foolish,” criticizing him for resuming joint military drills with the U.S. Also, in a bizarre claim that balloons carrying anti-communist leaflets from the South were responsible for the spread of COVID-19 in the North, she warned of “deadly” retaliation.
Speaking to The Korea Times recently, some experts, including Cheong Seong-chang, chief of the Center for North Korean Studies at the Sejong Institute, said North Korea will likely react to the joint military exercises with short-range missile launches rather than a nuclear or long-range missile test. Xi Jinping, president of China and a critical ally of North Korea, would not want Pyongyang to disturb the National Congress of the Communist Party of China as he seeks to secure an unprecedented third term in power there, the experts said.
North Korea fired two cruise missiles from the west coast last week following the beginning of the preliminary training for the Ulchi Freedom exercise. This year, the North conducted missile tests at an unprecedented pace, including launching its first intercontinental ballistic missile at full range since 2017.
