South Korean and American troops conducting joint exercise
The combined forces of South Korea and the United States will hold their first joint exercise in March to test Seoul’s war-waging capabilities after it retakes the wartime operational control of South Korean troops from the United States in 2012, officials at the Combined Forces Command (CFC) said Friday (Feb. 1).
The new drill, Key Resolve, replaces the annual joint exercise, Reception, Staging, onward Movement and Integration (RSOI), and will be held March 2 through March 7, the CFC said in a released statement.
South Korea is set to take back the wartime operational control, commonly known as OPCON, of its troops in April 2012, upon which the U.S.-led CFC will be disbanded. South Korea and the United States will each establish a new command center for their troops here which will work with each other on an equal footing.
"Key Resolve is a joint/combined command-post exercise designed to provide training for the ROK-US Combined Forces Command in the various aspects of RSOI and integration of forces from bases outside of the country," the released statement said. The ROK refers to South Korea’s official name, the Republic of Korea.
Some 27,000 U.S. troops, including 12,000 already stationed here, will take part in the weeklong exercise that will also include the U.S. Navy aircraft carrier USS Nimitz for the first time in history, according to a CFC official.
The 97,000-ton carrier carries about 5,300 crew members and 85 aircraft and is accompanied by five other ships that are part of the Nimitz Carrier Strike Group.
The new exercise will be linked with a joint field-training exercise, Foal Eagle, that "has been linked with RSOI for the past years," the statement said.
The CFC also informed the Korean People’s Army of North Korea through the United Nations Command earlier Friday that the upcoming exercise is "a defensive military readiness exercise, and that it is not meant to be provocative in any way."
Pyongyang regularly criticizes joint military exercises between South Korean and U.S. troops here, claiming they are aimed at preparing for an armed invasion of the North.
Some 28,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in South Korea as a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War and a deterrent to possible threats from the communist North. The divided Koreas technically remain at war as the Korean War ended only with an armistice agreement, not a peace treaty.