TEHRAN, March 20 - The United States and South Korea announced Tuesday that their annual joint military drills would go ahead next month, with no significant downsize in scale despite an ongoing diplomatic thaw with North Korea.
TEHRAN,Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The large-scale exercises involving tens of thousands of ground troops are a perennial source of tension between the two Koreas, with Pyongyang condemning them as provocative rehearsals for an invasion of the North.
With talks under way to set up a North-South summit, followed by a proposed face-to-face meet between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, there was speculation that this year's drills might be scaled back to avoid derailing the discussions.
They had already been delayed to avoid clashing with the Pyeongchang Winter Games in the South last month.
But Washington and Seoul said the exercises, expected to resume on April 1, would be "similar" in size to those of previous years.
"The UN Command has notified today the North Korean military on the schedule as well as the defensive nature of the annual exercises," Seoul's defence ministry spokeswoman told reporters.
The Pentagon added in a statement: "Our combined exercises are defence-oriented and there is no reason for North Korea to view them as a provocation."
According to a senior South Korean envoy who made a rare visit to Pyongyang earlier this month, Kim had made it clear he "understands" the need for the drills to go ahead.
Such an acknowledgement is in stark contrast to the Kim regime's denunciations of the exercises in the past. The North has often responded to the drills with its own military actions, and last year fired four ballistic missiles close to Japan.
"Foal Eagle" is a series of field training exercises with approximately 11,500 US forces taking part, together with 290,000 South Korean troops, while "Key Resolve" is a command post exercise using mainly computer-based simulations.
The US, as South Korea's security guarantor, has close to 30,000 troops stationed in the South -- a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice instead of a peace treaty.
Source: AFP
Your Comment