By HYUNG-JIN KIM
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean and U.S. troops will begin their large annual joint military drills next week to enhance readiness against North Korean threats, the allies announced Thursday, days after North Korea threatened high-profile provocations against what it called escalating U.S.-led aggression.
However, the announcement was overshadowed by the news of two South Korean fighter jets accidentally dropping eight bombs on a civilian area during a joint live-fire exercise with the U.S. military earlier Thursday.
Eight people were injured and South Korea’s military halted all live-fire drills across the country.
The allies have already begun joint field training for the March 10-20 command post exercise dubbed Freedom Shield exercise, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
The accidental bombing happened during one of the joint training exercises, though there were no U.S. soldiers involved in the incident.
South Korean military spokesperson Lee Sung Joon and his U.S. counterpart, Ryan Donald, told a joint news conference that the training is meant to strengthen their countries’ combined defense posture by reflecting evolving challenges such as North Korea’s growing military partnership with Russia.
Lee said the two allies plan 16 brigade-level field trainings this year, up from 10 such drills last year.
It was unclear how long the live-fire suspension would last. Military officials said they can restart firing exercises once authorities determine the cause of Thursday’s accident and take steps to prevent recurrences.
An initial investigation indicated one of the KF-16 pilots had entered wrong coordinates for a bombing site.
North Korea views major South Korean-U.S. military training as an invasion rehearsal and often reacts with missile tests and fiery rhetoric.
Earlier this week, Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, accused the United States of intensifying confrontational actions and threatened to ramp up measures “threatening the security of the enemy at the strategic level.” She cited the recent temporary deployments of U.S. strategic assets like an aircraft carrier and long-range bombers in South Korea and other U.S.-involved military activities.
Observers say North Korea could test-fire powerful nuclear-capable missiles designed to strike the U.S. mainland and American military bases in the region.
Since his Jan. 20 inauguration, President Donald Trump has said he would reach out to Kim Jong Un again to revive diplomacy. North Korea has not responded to Trump’s remarks and says U.S. hostilities against it has deepened since Trump’s inauguration.
During 2018 and 2019, Kim Jong Un and Trump met three times to discuss potential benefits for North Korea should it return to nuclear disarmament. But their diplomacy eventually fell apart after Trump rejected Kim’s offer to dismantle his main nuclear complex, a limited denuclearization step, in exchange of extensive sanctions relief.
