Tag: Key Resolve

Here is a good common sense decision to unnecessarily avoid exposing more U.S. military personnel to the coronavirus:

South Korea and the United States decided to postpone their springtime joint military exercises over growing concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus, their combined command said Thursday.

The two sides had initially planned to stage their computer-simulated combined command post training in March but decided to put it off “until further notice” in light of Seoul’s decision to raise its alert rating to “severe,” the highest level, over COVID-19, according to the Combined Forces Command (CFC).

It is the first time that the allies have decided to modify combined exercises due to health-related issues.

Yonhap

The news of the exercise cancellation comes on top of the fact that USFK employee in Daegu has now come down with the coronavirus as well.

It looks like Key Resolve is going to happen this spring, just don’t call it Key Resolve:

South Korea and the United States will rename their springtime combined Key Resolve exercise and desist from using the Foal Eagle name for their annual field training, a government source in Seoul said Wednesday.
The move appears to be part of efforts to prevent tensions with North Korea amid ongoing peace efforts with the communist state. Pyongyang has long denounced allied exercises as rehearsals for invasion.
The Key Resolve command post exercise will be renamed the “19-1 Exercise,” and focus on bolstering defensive capabilities, the source said on condition of anonymity. This year’s edition is expected to kick off its two-week schedule on March 4.

The name of the Foal Eagle field training exercise, usually scheduled to occur between March and April, will no longer be used. But battalion-level portions of the exercise are expected to proceed as they have been in the past, according to the source.

Yonhap News

You can read more at the link, but USFK definitely found the most boring exercise name ever to replace Key Resolve with. I would love to know if North Korea has stopped or changed the names of any of their exercises?

Anyway does anyone have any better ideas of what to rename Key Resolve as?

Do people actually think a name change of an exercise really matters in regards to whether Kim Jong-un will get upset? 

South Korea and the United States are considering renaming their major annual combined exercises, apparently as part of efforts to support ongoing diplomacy with North Korea, a military source in Seoul said Monday.
The allies have been in consultation on their overall plans for next year’s exercises, such as the springtime Key Resolve and the summertime Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), as they explore ways to prevent them from negatively affecting ongoing peace efforts.
“The South and U.S. have been coordinating their plans for next year’s training, and they have also been mulling the possibility of renaming them,” the source told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity.
“But nothing has been decided yet. Sooner or later, there will be an official announcement regarding the plans for the exercises and their names,” he added.
The allies have reportedly been considering changing Key Resolve into the ’19-1 Exercise and UFG into ’19-2 Exercise. Such a change, if finalized, would reportedly be one of the first major alliance decisions since current U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Robert Abrams took office on Nov. 8.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but the North Koreans will use any US-ROK exercise as an excuse for complaint or provocation if the sanctions are not dropped.  They can call a joint exercise “Pink Unicorns 2019” and the Kim regime will be complaining if sanctions are not dropped by then.  

So ROK Heads it is time for you to do your civic duty and help US and ROK planners with a name change that will not offend Kim Jong-un.  So who has some great ideas on what to name US-ROK military exercises?   

As I have been saying watch and see if the Key Resolve exercise get scheduled to be executed this spring:

South Korea and the United States will likely suspend their joint field exercises next year amid the detente reached on the peninsula with North Korea.

Both sides are in discussions on whether to postpone their annual large-scale Foal Eagle combined tactical training exercise slated for March, but no official consensus has been reached yet.

“The military authorities may suspend major joint military exercises next year, including Foal Eagle, but nothing specific has been decided between the defense chiefs of the two countries,” a military official said Thursday without elaborating.

However, Seoul and Washing will carry out a series of computer-simulated command post exercises next year, as they do not pose a serious security threat to the North.

The two countries are known to be discussing conducting the Key Resolve computerized command post drill in March despite the possible suspension of its real time counterpart, Foal Eagle.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but the fact that Key Resolve is being discussed could be a signal that the Trump administration doesn’t think the denuclearization and subsequent peace overtures are serious.  This also gives the Trump administration a bargaining chip if a second Trump-Kim summit is held.

I personally always thought the joint exercises would be restarted in time to execute Key Resolve 2019 because I never believed the Kim regime was were serious about real denuclearization:

The U.S. military will move ahead with all future military exercises on the Korean Peninsula, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis said Tuesday, suggesting that America’s brief suspension of the drills as a show of “good faith” toward North Korea has not paid dividends in the struggling denuclearization talks with Pyongyang.

“We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises,” Mr. Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon, less than three months after President Trump labeled the U.S.-South Korean drills “provocative” and ordered them temporarily halted following his unprecedented face-to-face meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Mr. Mattis made the announcement at a rare press conference with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford, during which the two also weighed in on a range of other topics, including efforts to stamp out the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria and the U.S. role in battling Iran-backed rebels in Yemen.  [Washington Times via a reader tip]

You can read more at the link, but supposedly the President received a hostile letter from the Butcher of the Cheonan, Kim Yong-chol that caused this announcement:

After the announcement it appears the ROK government may want to play delay games with restarting the joint exercises:

Resumption or suspension of joint military drills between South Korea and the United States is subject to discussions between the allies, an official from Seoul’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae said Wednesday.

“As of now, the issue has not been discussed between South Korea and the United States,” Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told a daily press briefing.  (……)

“It is an issue that should be discussed and decided by South Korea and the U.S. while reviewing the progress in the denuclearization of North Korea,” the Cheong Wa Dae official said.  [Yonhap]

I expect that the Moon administration will come out of his upcoming summit with Kim Jong-il offering some minor concession to entice the Trump administration to believe the Kim regime is serious about denuclearization.  Regardless I would be surprised if Key Resolve 2019 does not happen.  I guess we will see what happens.

Forget all the talk about denuclearization on the Korean peninsula following the Trump-Kim Summit in Singapore, the biggest news for me is President Trump announcing the stopping of joint military exercises:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he will stop “provocative and expensive” war games with South Korea in a surprise reference to the joint military exercises Pyongyang has criticized as a rehearsal of invasion.

Trump made the remarks during a press conference that followed his historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on the Singaporean resort island of Sentosa.

“War games are very expensive,” he said, raising the issue of their cost.

“I think it is very provocative … You have a country that is right next door,” he added, referring to the communist state.   [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link, but President Moon has previously said that UFG would be scaled down and now President Trump has used to word stopped.  I guess we will see what this all means, but for now it is pretty clear that the August UFG exercise will not happen the way it is normally executed.

If the joint exercises are stopped this is a big win for President Moon.  His left wing base does not support the exercises while the political opposition conservative party does.  So Moon’s base gets what it wants, for now and Moon can tell his political opposition that he was not the one that cancelled the joint exercises, President Trump did.

These joint exercise are important for USFK due to the high change over in personnel on the peninsula which these exercises help to keep personnel trained with their ROK military counterparts.  However, just like everything that North Korea has committed to cancelling joint exercises are easily reversible from the US perspective.  I don’t see President Trump committing to something non-reversible like troop withdrawals from the peninsula until the Kim regime does something non-reversible such as removing nuclear material to a third country for disposal.

It should continue to be an interesting year to see how this all plays out.

It looks like the upcoming Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises will be the most low key ones conducted in quite some time:

The upcoming joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea will minimize the deployment of U.S. strategic assets such as nuclear subs and strategic bombers.

In a brief statement, the defense ministry said on Tuesday the drills, which had been delayed until after the Winter Olympics and Paralympics, will begin on April 1, on “a scale similar to previous years.”

It did not provide details on what assets will be deployed or state how long the drills will last in comparison to previous years.

The United Nations Command notified the North Korean military of the plan the same day, and that the drills would be held as a regular exercise for defense purposes, the ministry said.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link.

This could be a trial balloon by the ROK government to see what the US reaction would be to scaling down the upcoming joint exercises:

South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo “jokingly” said Thursday the United States does not need to send a nuclear submarine and other strategic assets to Korea for the upcoming joint military drills.

He made the remark during a meeting with visiting Pacific Fleet Commander Adm. Scott Swift amid speculation that Seoul hopes to scale down this year’s Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises in order to maintain the mood of inter-Korean reconciliation spurred by the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

“Lots of changes are expected in South-North relations and (security conditions) surrounding the Korean Peninsula going forward,” the minister told the admiral, who is retiring in a few months.

In particular, Song added, the two Koreas plan to hold their third summit talks in late April with South Korea and the U.S. scheduled to stage the annual exercises.

He asked Swift to keep doing his best for a firm defense posture through his retirement, reportedly slated for May.

“You need not deploy (defense assets) like nuclear submarines during the remainder of your tenure as commander,” the minister said with a slight smile in front of TV cameras.

Swift briefly replied that his troops will stay ready for deployment in case of an order from national leaders.

Ministry officials later played down Song’s remark as a joke.  [Yonhap]

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle exercises that are reportedly scheduled for next month will occur, but the ROK government wants them scaled down and low key as part of their “maximum prudence” strategy:

The allies delayed the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle drills, originally scheduled for February, to prevent possible tension with North Korea ahead of the PyeongChang Winter Olympics. North Korea also held a low-key military parade on the eve of the Olympics in an apparent gesture of reconciliation.

Downsizing the drills is the most probable scenario for Seoul to maintain the ongoing mood for dialogue with Pyongyang.

North Korea has demanded the U.S. and South Korea suspend the drills for good, threatening to take “stern” countermeasures against the move.

The government, however, is likely to resume the drills as planned in April, as the U.S. has expressed a strong willingness to conduct the exercises right after the closing of the PyeongChang Paralympics in mid-March.

“There is little chance of the delay or suspension of the joint exercises,” Moon Chung-in, special adviser to President Moon Jae-in, said in a seminar in Washington, Tuesday.

Pyongyang is likely to lodge a vehement protest even against toned-down annual drills, so he said the thing is how to proactively deal with the reaction from the North.

He said President Moon will feel like he is walking on egg shells, taking an approach of “maximum prudence” on North Korea unlike maximum pressure from the U.S.  [Korea Times]

You can read more at the link, but I guess time will tell if maximum prudence will become maximum appeasement at some point.

It looks like the ROK government has made their decision to continue on with the execution of the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises after the conclusion of the Paralympics:

South Korea and the United States confirmed Tuesday that they will hold joint war games on the divided peninsula after the Olympics despite concerns the drills could jeopardize a fragile detente with North Korea.

The longtime allies had agreed to postpone the annual exercises until after the Winter Games in a bid to ease rising tensions with the nuclear-armed North, which considers them a rehearsal for an invasion.

U.S. military officials have always said the operations known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle would resume after the March 8-18 Paralympics. But some observers speculated that Seoul may ask for them to be further postponed or scaled down to maintain a spirit of reconciliation with Pyongyang.

Defense Minister Song Young-moo dismissed that idea on Tuesday, telling a parliamentary defense committee that the allies would announce the start date for the drills by the end of March, according to the Yonhap News Agency.  [Stars & Stripes]

You can read more at the link, but what this means is that the ROK government is not ready to make concessions yet to the Kim regime in regards to the US-ROK alliance.

It also means that the North Koreans will use this exercise as an excuse to restart missile testing.  What type of missile they test will be a sign of how serious they are about future talks.  If they launch short range missiles into the Sea of Japan that will be seen as less provocative then firing missiles over Japan or testing ICBMs that could hit the United States.