The US and South Korea would begin their annual joint military exercises this week, the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff said yesterday.
However, a spreading COVID-19 outbreak has apparently forced the allies to scale back an already low-key training program mainly involving computer-simulated war scenarios.
The drills from tomorrow to Aug. 28 could still irk North Korea, which portrays the allies’ training as invasion rehearsals and has threatened to abandon stalled nuclear talks if Washington persists with what it perceives as “hostile policies” toward Pyongyang.
Photo: EPA-EFE
The exercises also come at a delicate time after US President Donald Trump openly complained about the costs of maintaining 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea to protect against North Korean threats.
The allies have so far failed to sign a new cost-sharing agreement after the last one expired at the end of last year.
The drills involve so-called combined command post training, which is focused on computerized simulations aimed at preparing the two militaries for various battle scenarios, such as a surprise North Korean attack.
The South’s joint chiefs of staff did not specify how many troops would participate.
However, it is clear the size would be smaller than the summer drills of previous years, which often involved tens of thousands of troops on both sides, and combined computer simulations with field training.
This time, the pandemic has limited the number of US troops who could be brought in from abroad.
The US and South Korean militaries had canceled their springtime drills following a COVID-19 outbreak in the southern city of Daegu and nearby towns that had stabilized by April.
However, South Korea is now dealing with a virus resurgence in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan region, home to half of the country’s 51 million people.
It forced US Forces Korea to designate the capital and surrounding areas off-limits to personnel who do not live there.
The 279 new cases South Korea reported yesterday are the highest daily jump since early March.
There have been about 150 COVID-19 infections among US troops stationed in South Korea since February, which prompted Gyeonggi Province near Seoul to last month openly call for the cancelation of the drills.
Gyeonggi includes the city of Pyeongtaek, the site of US military headquarters.
The allies have downsized much of their combined training activity after Trump unilaterally suspended large-scale field training with South Korea after his first summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in June 2018.
Trump then seemed to adopt North Korea’s traditional view of such drills, criticizing them as a “provocative” drain of money.
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