The war games will be held between late August and early September and will include air, naval and ground personnel and equipment.
South Korean minister of national defence Lee Jong-sup briefed President Yoon Suk-yeol on plans for the joint exercises Friday.
Yoon, a conservative who took office in May, has signalled a change in policy toward North Korea from liberal predecessor Moon Jae-in, who favoured reconciliation with Pyongyang. For Yoon, the first military exercises during his administration present a chance to reaffirm South Korea’s alliance with the US.
Until 2017, the US and South Korea held full-scale field exercises twice a year: in spring and during the summer-fall period.
But the drills held in April 2018 were scaled down in the run-up to the historic summit that June between then-US president Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and ones scheduled for that fall were cancelled altogether. From 2019 on, the war games were limited to command post exercises conducted through computer simulations.
North Korea has test-fired at least 28 ballistic missiles so far in 2022, breaking the previous full-year record. It is also developing trajectory-shifting missiles, as well as launch systems capable of firing different types of missiles at the same time. There is evidence that North Korea will soon conduct its seventh nuclear weapons test.
Talks between North Korea and the US on denuclearisation broke down after the initial momentum of the Trump-Kim summits. North Korea’s advances in missile and nuclear weapons technology since then add urgency to the latest round of exercises.
Keeping pace with North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile programmes “is the top national defence priority,” according to Lee, the South Korean defence minister.
This year’s drills will be dubbed Ulchi Freedom Shield. They will include ground combat, artillery fire, attack helicopter fire, explosives disposal and resupply of frontline units.
Troops will also train to remove weapons of mass destruction. In the 2017 exercises, troops staged a mock raid on North Korean biological and chemical weapons facilities. During the simulation, they neutralised enemy forces and cleared out weapons from the site.
The joint exercises will include military aircraft. A key question is whether they involve strategic bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons. Naval patrol exercises will be on the schedule as well.
The Yoon administration looks to reorganise under a strategic command the “three-axis” response system against missile attacks from North Korea. The three-pronged programme includes the Kill Chain preemptive-strike system, the Korean Air and Missile Defence system, and the Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation plan.
South Korea will need to acquire new military technology in response to advanced North Korean capabilities.
The drills are expected to provoke sharp condemnation from Pyongyang.
“It is crystal clear that the US-South Korea joint military exercise to be held at the end of August this year will become a real war exercise aimed at attacking us preemptively” through all means, including nuclear weapons, said Choe Jin, deputy director general of the North’s state-run Institute for Disarmament and Peace, to Associated Press Television News in a Thursday interview posted on the foreign ministry’s website.