SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The United States and South Korea will begin their biggest combined military training in years next week, the South Korean military said Tuesday.
The allies’ summertime drills, named Ulchi Freedom Shield, will take place from Aug. 22 to Sept. 1 in South Korea and include field exercises involving aircraft, warships, tanks and potentially tens of thousands of troops.
The drills underscore Washington and Seoul’s commitment to restore large-scale training after they canceled some of their regular drills and downsized others to computer simulations in recent years because of COVID-19 concerns.
The U.S. Department of Defense also said the U.S., South Korean and Japanese navies took part in missile warning and ballistic missile search and tracking exercises off the coast of Hawaii from Aug. 8 to 14, which it said were aimed at furthering three-way cooperation in the face of North Korean challenges.
While the United States and South Korea describe their exercises as defensive, Ulchi Freedom Shield will almost surely draw an angry reaction from North Korea, which describes all allied training as invasion rehearsals and has used them to justify its nuclear weapons and missiles development.
China, North Korea’s main ally, expressed concern over the expansion of U.S. military exercises with its Asian allies, saying they could worsen tensions with the North. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin didn’t offer a specific answer when asked whether Beijing believes the trilateral drills in Hawaii were in some way directed at China.
“North Korea has repeatedly expressed its concern” over the joint drills, Wang said in a briefing in Beijing on Tuesday.
“The negative impact of the military exercises on the situation on the Korean Peninsula is worth paying attention to. All parties should act prudently and stop any actions that may increase tension and confrontation and damage the mutual trust,” he said.
Before being shelved or downsized, the U.S. and South Korea held major joint exercises every spring and summer in South Korea. The spring ones had been highlighted by live-fire drills involving a broad range of land, air and sea assets and usually involved around 10,000 American and 200,000 Korean troops.
Tens of thousands of allied troops participated in the summertime drills, which mainly consisted of computer simulations to hone joint decision making and planning, although South Korea’s military has emphasized the revival of large-scale field training this time.
The drills, which will kick off along with a four-day South Korean civil defense training program led by government employees, will reportedly include exercises simulating joint attacks, front-line reinforcements of arms and fuel, and removals of weapons of mass destruction.