The drills will continue to September 1
(Picture: REUTERS)The US and South Korea have begun their biggest combined military training in years against the growing threat of North Korea.
The exercises involving aircraft, warships, tanks and possibly tens of thousands of troops will continue to September 1.
The programme, called Ulchi Freedom Shield, started along with a four-day South Korean civil defence training programme led by government workers.
It will reportedly include simulated joint attacks, front-line reinforcements of arms and fuel, and removals of weapons of mass destruction.
The drills could draw an angry response from North Korea, which has repeatedly threatened conflicts with the US and South Korea amid a prolonged stalemate in diplomacy.
While Washington and Seoul describe their exercises as defensive, North Korea portrays them as invasion rehearsals that justify its nuclear weapons and missiles development.
Cho Joong-hoon, a spokesperson of South Korea’s Unification Ministry which handles inter-Korean affairs, said the South has not immediately detected any unusual activities or signs from the North.
The US and South Korea had cancelled some of their regular drills and reduced others to computer simulations in recent years to create space for diplomacy with North Korea and because of Covid-19 concerns.
The drills came after North Korea last week dismissed South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s offer to exchange denuclearisation steps and economic benefits.
Kim Yo Jong, the increasingly powerful sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, described Mr Yoon’s proposal as foolish.
She criticised Mr Yoon for continuing military exercises with the US and also for Seoul’s failure to stop South Korean civilian activists from flying anti-Pyongyang propaganda leaflets and other “dirty waste” across the border by balloon.
She also ridiculed US-South Korean capabilities for monitoring the North’s missile activity, insisting Seoul wrongly identified the launch location of the North’s latest missile tests last Wednesday, hours before Mr Yoon at a news conference urged Pyongyang to return to diplomacy.
Ms Kim earlier this month warned of “deadly” retaliation against South Korea over a recent North Korean Covid-19 outbreak, which Pyongyang dubiously claims was caused by leaflets and other objects floated by southern activists.
There are concerns the threat could lead to a nuclear or missile test or even border skirmishes, and that the North may try to raise tensions sometime around the allied drills.
