While COVID-19 has brought suffering to the whole world, North Korea seems to have become a beneficiary of the pandemic as the combined military drill between South Korea and the United States has been downsized due to the deadly disease. On Monday, Seoul and Washington kicked off their joint military training, but the nine-day exercise is proceeding as a computer-simulated command post exercise (CPX) only with no outdoor drills after the allies decided to scale it back, citing the coronavirus. Last year they canceled both spring and summer drills.
In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak in China in December 2019, North Korea quickly sealed off its borders to prevent the spread of the disease, but the border closing with China has been dealing a heavy economic blow to the country.
However, the pandemic is easing the North’s security concerns, given that Pyongyang routinely denounces the full-scale joint drill as a rehearsal for invasion. The North Korean regime seems to be happy about the scaled-back exercise as it has been holding back its criticism this time, unlike the past when it issued bellicose rhetoric and promises of catastrophe toward the allies.
“South Korea and the U.S. have not conducted a field training exercise for four years and the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) questions the actual effectiveness of the computer-simulated command post training,” Rep. Tae Yong-ho of the main opposition People Power Party wrote on Facebook.
“Kim Jong-un is the biggest beneficiary of the COVID-led curtailed joint military exercise.”
Until just before the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff announced the drill schedule on Sunday, one day ahead of its kickoff, the South Korean unification and foreign ministers said the government was required to come up with a flexible solution to the exercise issue to avoid escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula.
“North Korea usually protests the conducting of large Korea-U.S. combined exercises, calling them as rehearsals for an invasion of the North and has often conducted short-range missile launches to demonstrate its unhappiness,” U.S. Naval War College professor Terence Roehrig said.
“It is not clear why Pyongyang has not given its usual response, even if confined to a verbal protest. The answer may be due to internal economic challenges or North Korea is simply biding its time. It is also not entirely certain how much the exercises truly upset North Korean leaders or if these are largely useful occasions for criticizing Washington and Seoul.”
Some are also concerned that should the North take a forward-looking attitude toward a scaled-back drill, the South Korean government may agonize over whether to once again downsize or cancel the next combined training in the second half of the year as part of its plan to engage the North, raising more concerns from Washington over the lack of proper exercises and putting Seoul’s plan at stake to regain wartime operational control (OPCON) of South Korean troops from the U.S.
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| Helicopters are parked at U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi Province, Monday, when Korea and the United States began a combined military exercise. Yonhap |
President Moon Jae-in is seeking to regain OPCON by the end of his term in May 2022, but speculation is mounting that should South Korea continue to curtail the combined drill, it is expected to suffer from a lack of field training, making Seoul unprepared for the OPCON transition.
The U.S. side is complaining that CPX-only training is not enough to fully verify South Korea’s preparedness for military engagement.
Instead of responding to the joint exercise, the North is now focusing on pending economic issues.
On Tuesday, the Rodong Sinmun, the mouthpiece of the ruling Workers’ Party, carried contribution pieces by officials in the Cabinet and economic sectors holding themselves accountable for the lack of progress in economic development.
The paper highlighted officials’ self-criticism in an apparent bid to call for more efforts to carry out policy goals put forth during the party congress in the face of global sanctions and the fallout of the nation’s prolonged fight against the global pandemic.
While admitting to failure in his previous economic development plan and unveiling a new development scheme with a focus on self-reliance during the party congress, the North Korean leader criticized officials for showing passive and self-protecting tendencies in setting this year’s goals and urged for increased production of iron, steel and chemical fertilizer.
