South Korea-US Freedom Shield Exercise Begins Today... North Korea Backlash Possible Despite Reduced Field Training

The military authorities of South Korea and the United States started the Freedom Shield (FS) exercise, a theater-level joint drill simulating contingencies on the Korean Peninsula, today (the 9th).

Running through the 19th, this year's FS exercise will incorporate realistic threats into its scenarios, including lessons learned from recent warfare trends.

In particular, as Seoul and Washington have recently been accelerating the transition of wartime operational control (OPCON), the allies are expected to focus on evaluating and verifying whether the conditions for the OPCON transition are met.

The number of troops participating in this year's FS exercise is approximately 18,000, which is a similar level to last year.

However, the Field Training Exercise (FTX), which involves actual military troop movements during the drill period, is scheduled to be conducted 22 times in total, less than half compared to the 51 sessions held during the March FS exercise last year.

This is analyzed to reflect opinions from some within the government that the exercises needed to be adjusted to foster conditions for the resumption of North Korea-US dialogue ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump's visit to China from March 31 to April 2.

However, North Korea, which has shown sensitive reactions by labeling South Korea-US joint exercises as "rehearsals for an invasion of the North," may push back this time through actions such as ballistic missile launches.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.