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The drills include so-called combined command post training, which focuses on computer simulations aimed at preparing the two militaries for different battle scenarios, such as a surprise North Korean attack.
The Joint Staffs Chiefs have not indicated how many troops will participate. But it is clear that the size would be smaller than the summer boards of previous years, which often involved tens of thousands of troops on both sides, and combined computer simulations with field training. This time, the coronavirus pandemic limited the number of U.S. troops that could be imported from abroad.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries had canceled their spring drills following a Covid-19 outbreak in the southern city of Daegu and nearby cities that had stabilized by April.
But South Korea is now facing a resurgence of viruses in the densely populated Seoul metropolitan region, home to half the country’s 51 million people. It forced US Forces Korea to designate the capital and surrounding areas off-limits for personnel not residing there. The 279 new cases reported by South Korea on Sunday are the highest daily jump since early March.
Since February, there have been about 150 Covid-19 infections among U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, prompting Gyeonggi province near Seoul last month to openly call for the cancellation of the August drills. Gyeonggi includes the city of Pyeongtaek, the site of the US military headquarters.
The allies have reduced 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 seems to like North Korea’s traditional view of such drills none, criticizing them as a “provocative” twist of money.
Nuclear negotiations between Washington and Pyongyang have faltered since the collapse of Trump’s second meeting with Kim in February last year in Vietnam, where the Americans removed North Korea’s demand for major sanctions in exchange for a partial surrender of its nuclear capabilities.
The North responded to last year’s summer drills by raising its short-range missile tests and releasing verbal vitriol to South Korea, which had lobbied hard to provoke nuclear talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
