US-Led War Games Draw Warning From North Korea

The 11-day Freedom Shield exercise, scheduled to run from March 4-14, will focus on multi-area and multi-domain joint operations, as well as the “neutralization of North Korea’s nuclear threat,” defense officials in the South announced at the start of the week.

Kim Jong Un’s regime denounced the U.S.-led drills “for getting more undisguised in their military threat to a sovereign state and attempt for invading it,” according to a March 4 statement by North Korea’s Defense Ministry, carried on Tuesday by the official Korean Central News Agency.

“The U.S. and the ROK will be made to pay a dear price for their false choice while realizing that it causes their security uneasiness at a serious level every moment,” the statement said, referring to the Republic of Korea, the South’s official name.

Inter-Korean relations have nose-dived to a dangerous new low amid Kim’s record number of missile tests and his marked shift in foreign policy away from reconciliation with the South, a U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty ally for seven decades.

In January, the 40-year-old supreme leader declared South Korea the North’s “principal enemy.”

Since last fall, North and South Korea also have been competing in space, with each side placing their own spy satellite in orbit with help from Russia and the U.S., respectively.

Pyongyang said the allied war games would increase the unpredictability of the Korean War armistice.

“The frantic war drills by the ROK puppets and vassal forces led by the U.S. make a clear contrast with the reality of the DPRK mobilizing large-scale military forces into economic construction for the promotion of the people’s well-being, confirm again the source of regional instability and more clearly show who is the arch criminal threatening the mankind with nukes,” its Defense Ministry said, referring to the country’s full name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

During the same exercise one year ago, North Korea launched long- and short-range missiles in what it described as defensive measures.

Freedom Shield brings together the South Korean armed forces, U.S. Force Korea and the United Nations Command, the multinational coalition that has backed the South since the Korean War of the early 1950s.

The specialist Air and Space Forces Magazine said on Tuesday that U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcons, A-10 “Warthogs,” and fifth-generation F-35 Lightning IIs were expected to take part.

The U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps separately announced their participation in the drills this week.

“Training with the ROK Army allows for seamless coordination and combined operations, enhancing Eighth Army’s overall defense capabilities,” the U.S.’s South Korea-based Eighth Army said.

“The combined training exercises and shared intelligence contribute to a high level of interoperability, enabling Eighth Army to respond swiftly and effectively to any threat,” it said.

At a Washington think tank on Tuesday, a senior U.S. official said Pyongyang’s foreign policy shift had resulted in greater North Korean cooperation with Russia and China, with potentially serious consequences for security in the region.

Jung Pak, the top U.S. official for North Korea affairs at the State Department, told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that Kim’s regime had become a “willing supplier” of arms to Moscow.

Pyongyang has shipped “dozens of ballistic missiles and thousands of containers of ammunition to Russia for use in its war against Ukraine,” she said.

Pyongyang and Moscow did not return multiple requests seeking comment.

Both governments deny trading arms—a violation of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions passed with Russia’s support.

Pak added: “At this point, we don’t assess that Kim Jong Un has changed his primary goal—the preservation of his regime—or the means by which he hopes to achieve this—the international acceptance of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons power.”

“What has changed is that Kim seems to have decided he cannot achieve his primary goals through negotiations with the United States or the Republic of Korea. He’s viewing the world through a new Cold War lens, in which the DPRK can benefit from aligning more closely with Russia and the PRC,” she said.