North Korean leader Kim Jong Un invites President Donald Trump to step across the border during a meeting at the Joint Security Area of the Demilitarized Zone, June 30, 2019. (White House)
President Donald Trump’s administration is “gambling” on a potential war with Pyongyang by transforming his predecessor’s policy on North Korea into something more “vicious,” North Korea’s state-run news agency said Tuesday.
Freedom Shield — a country-wide, 11-day military exercise by the U.S. and South Korea that ended Thursday — “cannot be seen as a simple follow-up or repetition” of previous drills, according to the Korean Central News Agency.
More than 12,500 South Korean troops participated and over 1,000 sorties were flown during the exercise, according to South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense and U.S. Forces Korea.
Despite Pyongyang’s protests over what it called “warlike” training, U.S. and South Korean officials describe Freedom Shield as a defensive exercise covering land, air, sea and cyberspace to prepare for potential North Korean aggression. A second large-scale annual exercise, Ulchi Freedom Shield, is typically held in August.
Earlier this month, Kim Yo Jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, accused the Trump administration of continuing former President Joe Biden’s “hostile policy” against Pyongyang.
Washington’s approach is “sufficient justification for [North Korea] to indefinitely bolster its nuclear war deterrent,” she said in a March 2 KCNA report.
Two months into his second term, Trump has not publicly commented on any potential policy shifts toward North Korea.
During a March 13 meeting with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, Trump told reporters he had “a great relationship” with Kim and claimed he had prevented “a nuclear war” through negotiations with the North Korean leader during his first term.
Trump and Kim held their first summit in Singapore in 2018, followed by a second in Vietnam the following year. They also met at the Demilitarized Zone dividing North and South Korea in 2019.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after a Feb. 15 meeting with South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul, “reaffirmed America’s commitment to the complete denuclearization of [North Korea] while expressing the Trump administration’s openness to dialogue,” according to a State Department news release.
The Biden administration also sought North Korea’s denuclearization while offering Kim a chance to negotiate.
North Korea has conducted three days of ballistic missile tests so far this year. It last fired an unspecified number of ballistic missiles toward the Yellow Sea on March 10, the start of Freedom Shield, according to South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff.
