From 16-28 August 2020, the armed forces of the United States and South Korea will hold scheduled joint exercises inside South Korea. Those, in turn, will be preceded by joint exercises held by the two countries to work through emergency response actions; these will take place from 11-14 August.
During these exercises, the two allies intend to test South Korea’s ability to independently control its troop units during a wartime situation, but this verification process will be partially postponed until the next exercises slated to begin at the start of 2021, since the American forces necessary to conduct the exercises cannot arrive in South Korea in large numbers due to the pandemic.
However, due to quarantine measures and decreasing the scope of nighttime trainings, the duration of the exercises was increased by 2-3 days in comparison with the maneuvers held in previous years.
Two series of exercises that are usually held in March and August that are being closely monitored by North Korea have to do with getting ready to give Seoul back military operational control over its US forces. However, we will talk about giving Seoul the ability to control its troop units during wartime on its own in a separate piece, because this issue is laden with quite a few pitfalls, and treating it as “Seoul is seeking independence, but Washington is drawing out the process” is not entirely correct. Here, we will take note of what various military games looked like in 2020.
In 2019, Seoul and Washington canceled large-scale, springtime maneuvers called Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, and held the Dong Maeng command post exercises instead. However, this elicited criticism from conservatives and some military service personnel. For example, on 10 March 2020 the Pentagon’s press secretary, Jonathan Hoffman, stated that indefinitely postponing the joint military exercises between South Korea and the US due to the COVID-19 pandemic did not cause the level of combat readiness for both countries’ troops to sharply deteriorate, but as soon as the virus outbreak subsides the maneuvers need to be resumed. And on 12 May, former US Force Korea commander Walter Sharp stated that in reality curtailing joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States does have an impact on preparation for troop units.
The Dong Maeng springtime exercises were officially postponed, but as a warning to Pyongyang, which resumed its short-range missile launches this year, from 20-24 April the US and South Korean air forces held joint exercises in which American F-16 fighter jets and South Korean F-15K and KF-16 jets also took part. One representative from the South Korean Air Force declared that the exercises were typical, and their scale was comparable with previous years.
On 18 May 2020, the South Korean Ministry of Defense announced that the military exercises off the country’s southeastern coast, which were supposed to last five days and include live fire, were postponed owing to unfavorable weather conditions.
On 20 May, the Yonhap News Agency reported that scheduled training in the US for a group of South Korean special forces was canceled due to the coronavirus. To what extent forces from the Republic of Korea’s Navy would participate in the RIMPAC exercise, which will be held from 17-31 August under US command near the Hawaiian Islands, was widely debated. RIMPAC is held once every two years, and the Republic of Korea Navy regularly takes part in it, but this time it was supposed to send two destroyers there. For comparison, in 2018, South Korea sent a submarine, a patrol aircraft, and about 700 troops, along with the destroyers, to take part in the exercises.
On 10 June, South Korea and the US held joint air defense and anti-missile defense exercises that were scheduled for the first half of the year. Korea’s Minister of Defense, Jeong Kyeong-doo, the two countries’ service personnel worked through the actions they would take to repel the North Korean missile threat using the Patriot and THAAD missile defense systems. The minister emphasized that the exercises had nothing to do with any attempts to integrate South Korea’s anti-missile defense system into the more extensive American one.
On 11 June, the South Korean military conducted a firing practice exercise that was supposed to take place in May, but was postponed due to inclement weather conditions. The firing exercises took place along the Uljin-gun country coastline, in Gyeongsangbuk-do Province. Naval, air force, and ground troop units all took part in the maneuvers. Service personnel conducted a live-fire exercise using the new Cheonmu anti-aircraft missile system, which is in service with the country’s ground troops. Warships were also involved in the exercises. They had also planned for FA-50 fighters to work through launching air-to-surface missiles, but weather conditions did not allow that to be executed. Sources claimed the location for the exercise was chosen in accordance with an inter-Korean military agreement that states that the parties are prohibited from conducting exercises that involve conducting firing within a radius of 40 kilometers from the military demarcation line that separates both sides.
However, although military personnel affirm that all these events were scheduled beforehand, experts link this flurry of activity to the “June escalation” when, “thanks to” deserters from DPRK, it almost annulled its military agreement.
On 1 July 2020, commander Robert Abrams once again proclaimed that, in the face of North Korea’s expanding nuclear and missile strike potential, South Korea and the US need to continue holding large-scale, integrated military exercises. Against this backdrop, the issue arose about whether the Dong Maeng exercises would take place. On 2 July, media outlets in South Korea wrote that three action plans were under consideration, depending on COVID-19. Plan A calls for holding full-scale exercises; plan B calls for scaling them back to the level of small troop units; plan C entails calling off all maneuvers.
On 7 July, Korea’s Minister of Defense Jeong Kyeong-doo, and Robert Abrams, the commander of United States Forces Korea, held an unscheduled meeting and talked about the issues involved in conducting joint exercises in August this year.
On 11 July, sources for Yonghap reported that the parties “are increasingly inclined to scale down, or even cancel, major joint exercises again”. They say that negotiations are ongoing, but everything depends on the pandemic. In addition, everyone entering South Korea must go through a two-week quarantine, and since the term of office for the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of South Korea is coming to an end, “it is not easy to hold a major exercise like this during a change of command.” However, the American side seemed to keep insisting, drawing a connection between future exercises and the timetable for giving over command, but conservatives pounced on discussions about the issue, stating that calling off the exercises a second time as an olive branch for Pyongyang will not lead to “reciprocation” from the North.
Former US Special envoy for the Six-Party Talks, Joseph Detrani said during an interview with The Korea Times: “If the exercise is canceled or postponed, it is possible that North Korea will soften its stance, and agree to a possible working-level meeting in response to recent requests from the US and South Korea to resume negotiations. However, I doubt that the canceling or postponing the exercise will induce the North to resume working-level negotiations, given that it has refused to meet with the US or South Korea since late 2019.”
Meanwhile, from 16-17 July South Korea and Japan took part in multilateral anti-piracy exercises in the waters near the Somalian coastline. These scheduled exercises, called operation Atalanta, took place in the Gulf of Aden with South Korea, Japan, and Spain participating. On the South Korea side, the Cheonghae Unit (we should recall how – upon request from the United States – this contingent of 300 people has temporarily expanded the regions for its mission covers from the Gulf of Aden to the Strait of Hormuz) took part, as did a Sejong the Great-class destroyer. Military personnel worked through vessel maneuvers, and how to fire upon and react to approaching pirate ships.
On 28 July, speaking at a parliamentary committee meeting on defense issues, Jeong Kyeong-doo stated that the US and South Korea could hold joint military exercises in the middle of August: the parties are talking about specific times frames, taking into account how complex the situation is owing to the pandemic.
And now that the decision has finally been made, the author hopes that this will not lead to a tough response from the North, and a return to the times when both sides rattled their sabers every spring and autumn. Moreover, in 2020 the intensity of military activity in Washington and Seoul really did subside to a great extent, although the author would not rank Seoul’s desire for peace as the primary reason for this, but rather fears about the coronavirus.
Konstantin Asmolov, Ph.D, Chief Research Fellow of the Center for Korean Studies, Institute of Far Eastern Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.
