US, South Korea open biggest drills in years, protests aroused

Gulf Today Report

The United States and South Korea began their biggest combined military training in years on Monday as they heighten their defence posture against the growing North Korean nuclear threat, as liberal activists held a rally to protest against it.

The drills could draw an angry response from North Korea, which has dialed up its weapons testing activity to a record pace this year while repeatedly threatening conflicts with Seoul and Washington amid a prolonged stalemate in diplomacy.

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The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises will continue through Sept. 1 in South Korea and include field exercises involving aircraft, warships, tanks and potentially tens of thousands of troops.

While Washington and Seoul describe their exercises as defensive, North Korea portrays them as invasion rehearsals and has used them to justify its nuclear weapons and missiles development.

US and South Korean marines participate in a joint landing operation drill in Pohang. File/Reuters

Ulchi Freedom Shield, which started 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.

Meanwhile, South Korea's wartime command was handed over the US-led UN command after the 1950-53 Korean War broke out. South Korea won back its peacetime operational control in 1994.

In protest against the planned South Korea-US war games, thousands of liberal activists gathered in central Seoul on Saturday in advance of the Liberation Day on Monday to celebrate the 77th anniversary of the Korean Peninsula's liberation from the Imperial Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.

The protesters took to the streets and chanted anti-US slogans shouting, "Dissolve (South) Korea-US alliance" and "This land is not a US war base."

Protesters hold a rally against the joint military exercises between South Korea and the US in Seoul on Monday. AFP

The activists, most of them dressed in raincoat, held in their hands various placards and signs criticizing the United States that read "No war rehearsal, No US" and "No (South) Korea-US-Japan military cooperation."

The allies will also train for drone attacks and other new developments in warfare shown during Russia’s war on Ukraine and practice joint military-civilian responses to attacks on seaports, airports and major industrial facilities such as semiconductor factories.

The United States and South Korea in past years had canceled some of their regular drills and downsized others to computer simulations to create space for the Trump administration’s diplomacy with North Korea and because of COVID-19 concerns.

Tensions have grown since the collapse of the second meeting between former President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in early 2019. The Americans then rejected North Korean demands for a major release of crippling US-led sanctions in exchange for dismantling an aging nuclear complex, which would have amounted to a partial surrender of the North’s nuclear capabilities. Kim has since vowed to bolster his nuclear deterrent in face of "gangster-like” US pressure.