South Korean and U.S. forces here ended their five-day joint exercise Friday, in which Seoul took sole command of its own troops for the first time.
Korea led the annual Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercise for the first time to prepare for its takeover of wartime operational control of its armed forces from the U.S. military in 2012.
A Defense Ministry official said on condition of anonymity that ``the exercise was very successful. We did find several loopholes we still need to work on, but this is one of the main purposes of the drill," according to Yonhap News Agency.
About 56,000 South Korean troops and 10,000 American soldiers took part in the command and control, war-fighting exercise, aimed at improving interoperability between the two nations' forces.
The wartime operational control, often called OPCON, of South Korean soldiers was handed to the commander of U.S. Forces Korea at the outset of the 1950-53 Korean War.