Joint military drill may emerge as hot-button issue for allies

By Kang Seung-woo

Whether to hold joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States in 2021 may put the allies at loggerheads, according to diplomatic experts, Thursday, as Washington is expected to resume the annual combat training, while Seoul is likely to seek to suspend or even stop it altogether.

Kathleen Hicks, nominee for U.S. deputy secretary of defense / Courtesy of Biden-Harris Transition

On Wednesday local time, U.S. President-elect Joe Biden nominated Kathleen Hicks as deputy secretary of defense, who would be the first woman to serve in the role if confirmed by the Senate. However, to South Korea, there is something more than her honorable title to care about, based on her recent contribution opposing the allies' unilateral halt to the military exercises.

“Mutual freeze for freeze approaches on exercises could likewise be considered, but they should never deny South Korea and the United States from preparing combined forces for non-peninsula contingencies and from appropriate self-defense measures,” she wrote to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in June 2018 after President Donald Trump met North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Singapore, during which the U.S. decided to suspend the regular military drills. “President Trump's agreement to suspend the upcoming U.S.-ROK combined exercise does not appear to meet this threshold for protecting U.S. lethality, and should not be advanced absent substantial North Korean concessions.”

Park Won-gon, a professor of international politics at Handong Global University, said, “Despite her agreement with Trump's decision, she made it clear that the U.S. should not offer more than that amid Pyongyang's repeated calls for a permanent end to the drill.”

Viewing the joint drills as an invasion rehearsal, the North Korean regime has urged the allies to stop the exercises for good without offering any corresponding measures to reduce tensions.

Here in the South under the Moon Jae-in government focusing on engagement with the North, there have been calls to permanently cancel the large-scale exercise as part of efforts to calm the North and drive the Korean Peninsula toward peace.

“South Korea and the U.S. need to discuss whether to cancel or scale down the exercises in order not to provoke North Korea,” former Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun said in a conversation with Unification Minister Lee In-young last month.

Lee responded, “We need to deal with the issue wisely so as not to ramp up tensions on the peninsula.”

Despite U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) Commanding General Robert Abrams' repeated complaints of insufficient combat training, President Trump has ignored the call as part of efforts to reduce tensions.

However, the Biden administration is expected to respect regional military commanders' opinions, so the U.S. is likely to resume the military drills, which would irk the North Korean leader.

“Whether it would be large-scale training or scaled down, the North would likely react strongly to it,” Park said, adding that the exercise would go low-key as the Biden administration is expected to consider the South Korean government's stance.