ROK Defense Ministry Says Key Resolve and Foal Eagle Exercises Will Be Modified Again this Year

This is not a surprise considering the North Koreans have been so far this year behaving:

South Korea and the United States will modify their springtime combined exercises in order to support diplomatic efforts to denuclearize North Korea, the defense ministry said Tuesday.

Since the nuclear negotiating process began in 2018, the South and the U.S. have either scaled back or made other modifications to joint military drills in an effort to avoid provoking Pyongyang that has long denounced such maneuvers as a rehearsal for invasion.

“We’ve been smoothly preparing for planned combined drills,” a senior ministry official said. “If diplomatic efforts are under way, we will conduct (the drills) within the bounds to be agreed upon between the South and the U.S.”

The stance was part of the ministry’s comprehensive policy plan for the new year, which Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo reported to President Moon Jae-in at the Gyeryongdae military headquarters in the South Chungcheong Province in the day.

In line with the policy, the two countries are expected to replace their usual large-scale springtime exercise, Key Resolve and Foal Eagle maneuvers, with a computer-simulated command post exercise (CPX), called Dong Maeng, just as they did last year.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Dong Maeng means “alliance” in English and it is what they replaced the UFL exercise with last summer. It looks like Key Resolve is going to use the same name. Even with the downsized exercise and name change the North Koreans still complained about it last year.