South Korea, US cut back military drill over COVID-19
07 March, 2021
South Korea and the United States will carry out their springtime military training this week, however the joint drill will come to be smaller than usual because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Seoul said on Sunday (Mar 7).
The allies will begin a nine working day "computer-simulated command post exercise" on Monday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Personnel said in a statement.
South Korea and America decided to progress with the drills after "comprehensively considering the COVID-19 condition, the repair of the combat readiness posture, the denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula and the establishment of peace", the JCS said, noting that the work out is "defensive" found in nature.
The drills won't include outdoor manoeuvres, which were carried out over summer and winter, and the number of troops and equipment will be minimised because of the pandemic, Yonhap news agency reported.
The exercises provide a prospect to examine South Korea's readiness to take over wartime operational control (OPCON), and the series of scaled rear drills could complicate President Moon Jae-in's get to complete the transfer before his term leads to 2022.
Even before the pandemic the drills have been reduced to facilitate US negotiations targeted at dismantling Pyongyang's nuclear programmes.
The combined drills are closely monitored by North Korea which calls them a "rehearsal for war".
While Pyongyang has in some cases taken care of immediately such drills with its own displays of military force, it can be unlikely to do so this time around, said Chad O'Carroll, CEO of Korea Risk Group, which monitors North Korea.
"I think there'’s an excessive amount of on the household agenda heading wrong to risk any significant tit-for-tat escalation," he said on Twitter. "And this is certainly a government which tends to focus almost all of its information on dealing with one key concern at a time."
North Korea's drastic measures to avoid a COVID-19 outbreak have exacerbated human rights abuses and economic hardship, including information of starvation, because of its citizens, previously battered by intercontinental sanctions, a United Nations investigator has said.
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