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.
CREDIT-GRABBER: China said its coast guard rescued the crew of a fishing vessel that caught fire, who were actually rescued by a nearby Taiwanese boat and the CGA Maritime search and rescue operations do not have borders, and China should not use a shipwreck to infringe upon Taiwanese sovereignty, the Coast Guard Administration (CGA) said yesterday. The coast guard made the statement in response to the China Coast Guard (CCG) saying it saved a Taiwanese fishing boat. The Chuan Yu No. 6 (全漁6號), a fishing vessel registered in Keelung, on Thursday caught fire and sank in waters northeast of Diaoyutai Islands (釣魚台). The vessel left Keelung’s Badouzih Fishing Harbor (八斗子漁港) at 3:35pm on Sunday last week, with seven people on board — a 62-year-old Taiwanese captain surnamed Chang (張) and six
RISKY BUSINESS: The ‘incentives’ include initiatives that get suspended for no reason, creating uncertainty and resulting in considerable losses for Taiwanese, the MAC said China’s “incentives” failed to sway sentiment in Taiwan, as willingness to work in China hit a record low of 1.6 percent, a Ministry of Labor survey showed. The Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) also reported that the number of Taiwanese workers in China has nearly halved from a peak of 430,000 in 2012 to an estimated 231,000 in 2024. That marked a new low in the proportion of Taiwanese going abroad to work. The ministry’s annual survey on “Labor Life and Employment Status” includes questions respondents’ willingness to seek employment overseas. Willingness to work in China has steadily declined from
The Legislative Yuan’s Finance Committee yesterday approved proposed amendments to the Amusement Tax Act (娛樂稅法) that would abolish taxes on films, cultural activities and competitive sporting events, retaining the fee only for dance halls and golf courses. The proposed changes would set the maximum tax rate for dance halls and golf courses at 50 and 20 percent respectively, with local governments authorized to suspend the levies. Article 2 of the act says that “amusement tax shall be levied on tickets sold or fees charged by amusement places, facilities or activities” in six categories: “Cinema; professional singing, story-telling, dancing, circus, magic show, acrobatics
INFLATION UP? The IMF said CPI would increase to 1.5 percent this year, while the DGBAS projected it would rise to 1.68 percent, with GDP per capita of US$44,181 The IMF projected Taiwan’s real GDP would grow 5.2 percent this year, up from its 2.1 percent outlook in January, despite fears of global economic disruptions sparked by the US-Iran conflict. Taiwan’s consumer price index (CPI) is projected to increase to 1.5 percent, while unemployment would be 3.4 percent, roughly in line with estimates for Asia as a whole, the international body wrote in its Global Economic Outlook Report published in the US on Monday. The figures are comparatively better than the IMF outlook for the rest of the world, which pegged real GDP growth at 3.1 percent, down from 3.3 percent
RSS