By Lee Min-hyung
South Korea and the United States have not yet made a decision on whether to continue suspending their joint military exercises next year despite an earlier pledge to finalize the schedules for the drills no later than Dec. 1.
The pledge was made on the sidelines of the annual Security Consultative Meeting in Washington in October. South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo said he would announce the 2019 joint exercise plans under close consultation with U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, but no specific timelines or schedules have been confirmed.
“The announcement was expected to be made before the aforementioned deadline, but both defense leaders are still narrowing their differences on the agenda,” the South's defense ministry spokeswoman Choi Hyun-soo said. “We will announce the details at the earliest possible date.”
This came at a time when the allies are scaling down their joint military drills in reflection of the ongoing peace momentum on the Korean Peninsula.
On Monday, South Korea started an independent air drill replacing the Vigilant Ace joint aerial exercise with the United States, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Monday.
The Republic of Korea Air Force plans to conduct its own drill for five days from Monday, which the aerospace force says is aimed at maintaining combat readiness in the air and improving pilots' abilities to carry out military missions.
But concerns have surfaced that Seoul may remain more vulnerable to possible security threats from Pyongyang, as the drill is smaller in scale compared with last year's Seoul-Washington joint air drill.
“The aerial forces of the South and the U.S. believe there is no stumbling block for the allies to maintain joint combat readiness, as both sides have continuously worked closely with each other by verifying bilateral networking and command systems (despite the lack of the Vigilant Ace),” an official from the JCS said.
This is not the first time this year the allies have shown signs of scaling down their joint military exercises. In June, they suspended their large-scale Ulchi Freedom Guardian annual command post exercise.
The move falls in line with the ongoing peace gestures towards North Korea, which expressed anger whenever the South and the U.S. carried out their annual joint military exercises.
Pyongyang wants Seoul and Washington to make what the regime calls a “reciprocal” gesture in exchange for its ongoing steps for denuclearization. The steps include the dismantlement of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site in May and a part of the Tongchang-ri missile facility in July.
In exchange, the North wants Seoul and Washington to suspend all military exercises.
But the U.S. wants the regime to offer a more specific timeline for its planned denuclearization. For this reason, calls have grown for the leaders of the U.S. and the North to hold their second summit as soon as possible to resolve the ongoing deadlock in their bilateral denuclearization talks.