South Korea, U.S and Japanese begin Freedom Edge drills off Jeju Island despite North Korea's threats. Image credit: Korea JoongAng Daily.
(The Post News) – The United States, South Korea, and Japan rolled out a huge air and naval exercise off Jeju Island, South Korea, on Monday, a demonstration of trilateral military coordination condemned by North Korea as a “reckless show of strength.”.
The exercise, known as Freedom Edge, is continuing until Friday and will focus on increasing joint operational capabilities at sea, air and in cyberspace. South Korea‘s Defense Ministry said the exercises are designed to respond to the rising nuclear and missile threats from the North.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command reported Freedom Edge was “the most advanced demonstration of trilateral defense cooperation thus far” in listing ballistic-missile and air-defense training, naval operations readiness, medical evacuations and integrated aerial missions by U.S. Marine and Air Force capabilities.
South Korea Drills Receives Warning
Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, decried the exercises through state media Sunday. She warned that the training is a hostile policy towards Pyongyang.
The idiotic demonstration of strength wielded by them in real action close to the DPRK, the wrong place, will certainly give themselves worse repercussions,” she asserted, using the acronym of the official name of North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Kim also condemned a separate Iron Mace tabletop exercise by Seoul and Washington, said to be concurrent with Freedom Edge. That exercise aims to examine the means of integrating U.S. nuclear capacity with South Korea’s conventional weapons capacity in a deterrence theory, though officials have released no information.
Rising Tensions
North Korea has traditionally responded to allied drills with its own displays or weapons tests. Kim Jong Un’s regime has rebuffed repeated gestures from Washington and Seoul to resume disarmament talks, instead strengthening ties with China and Russia.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Pyongyang has supplied Moscow with artillery and ballistic missiles and sent thousands of troops to assist Russian forces in the Kursk region. Earlier this month, Kim stood beside Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping in a Beijing military parade, a symbolic gesture of unity between the two powers.
North Korea’s U.N. delegation also declared Monday that the country is an “irreversible” nuclear weapon state, reaffirming its refusal to get rid of them.
While South Korean officials argue Freedom Edge is a necessary defensive step, protesters in Seoul marched through the streets Monday opposing the combined exercises, stating they are likely to unleash further escalation on the Korean Peninsula.
Against those reservations, the U.S., South Korea, and Japan have established trilateral defense cooperation as a pillar of their regional policy, particularly with North Korea fast-tracking weapons research and aligning itself ever more closely with Moscow and Beijing.
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