During last week’s summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the US promised to suspend all joint military exercises with South Korea. This was important because joint exercises between the two have been focused on threatening North Korea.
So it was unsurprising when on Monday, the South Korean Defense Ministry confirmed that the two nations have agreed to suspend the Freedom Guardian war games, which were scheduled for August. Some officials suggested the exercise could still happen if the talks fell apart.
Even more curiously, officials say that there still has not been a decision on suspending any war games scheduled for beyond August. South Korean officials did, however, say there would be high-level meetings with the US this week.
Though it seems South Korea wasn’t totally in on the decision to suspend the war games as part of US-North Korea diplomacy, it seems to be taking an awfully long time to suspend all those war games going forward.
US ONLY “suspends” military drills./ Which, of course, are held only for defense of Japan, US, and S./Korea.
But how these war games look in the eyes of China, Russia, and N.Korea?
I understand that the drills are looked on by above countries as possible, probable, or very likely invasions of NK.
And because of such expectations, NK has to spend too much on defense; which takes away food from the table.