South Korean soldiers conduct air-and-ground assault training during Freedom Shield drills at the Korea Combined Training Center in Inje county, South Korea, March 13, 2024. (Katie Retschulte/U.S. Army National Guard)
DAEGU, South Korea — The first of two large-scale military exercises carried out each year by the U.S. and South Korea will proceed as planned next month, despite “internal and external uncertainties,” the South’s acting president said this week.
Freedom Shield “will be carried out as usual” on land, air and sea at an unspecified date, Choi Sang-mok said in a news release from the presidential office Tuesday.
“National security is a top priority that cannot be overlooked at any moment,” he said in the release.
This year’s Freedom Shield will be the first of President Donald Trump’s second term in office. He and then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in suspended the drills in 2018. They resumed in 2022.
Choi, South Korea’s finance minister and deputy prime minister, became acting president after his predecessor, former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, was impeached Dec. 27. Han assumed the president’s role after President Yoon Suk Yeol was impeached and charged with insurrection over his short-lived martial law attempt on Dec. 3.
Freedom Shield is a “routine defensive training event” between the two allies, U.S. Forces Korea spokesman David Kim said by email Wednesday.
“The exercise aims to strengthen the U.S.-[South Korea] alliance, enhance readiness and promote security and stability on the Korean Peninsula,” he said.
Freedom Shield is the first of two large-scale exercises conducted each year throughout South Korea. The second, Ulchi Freedom Shield, is usually held in August.
Both exercises are roughly two weeks long and contain dozens of separate drills. Last year’s Ulchi Freedom Shield involved around 19,000 troops, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said in August.
USFK, the command responsible for the 28,500 American troops in South Korea, does not disclose the number participating in the semiannual exercises, citing operational security concerns.
Trump and Moon suspended the drills as they attempted to negotiate with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to give up his regime’s nuclear arsenal.
The joint exercises are “very expensive,” and it is “inappropriate to have war games” amid the negotiations, Trump said after his summit with Kim in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
The drills were restarted four years later under President Joe Biden and Yoon, both of whom vowed to boost their military capabilities to deter Pyongyang.
North Korea routinely condemns the joint military drills and characterizes them as a rehearsal for an invasion of its country.
Four days after the allies concluded Freedom Shield on March 14, North Korea fired three short-range ballistic missiles that flew about 185 miles eastward before splashing down in the Sea of Japan, or East Sea.
North Korea last fired several short-range ballistic missiles that flew roughly 155 miles before coming down in the East Sea on Jan. 14, according to the South’s Ministry of National Defense.
