Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2019<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\nThis is despite warnings by North Korea that the exercise may affect the resumption of denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang.
\u201cThe nature of the exercise is not offensive \u2026 and is for strengthening the alliance,\u201d said Choi Jong-kun, the secretary for peace planning to President Moon Jae-in, during the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado on Saturday.
Choi told reporters that the exercise would largely involve computer simulations and few troops in the field, an apparent move not to intimidate the North, which has routinely condemned military drills by South Korea and the US.
On July 16, North Korea\u2019s Foreign Ministry accused the US of readying for war by holding military drills with South Korea, hinting at the possibility of resuming missile and nuclear tests.
\u201cIt is crystal clear that it is an actual drill and a rehearsal of war aimed at militarily occupying our Republic by surprise attack and rapid dispatch of large-scale reinforcements,\u201d the ministry said. \u201cWith the US unilaterally reneging on its commitments, we are gradually losing our justifications to follow through on the commitments we made with the US as well.\u201d
The exercise the North has criticized is the \u201cAlliance 19-2\u201d scheduled for Aug. 5 and Aug. 23. Previously, the US-South Korean joint exercise in the latter part of the year was called the Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG), a command post operation centered on computer-simulated war games in response to a scenario of all-out war with the North.
The UFG was announced to end in June last year following a summit between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. Earlier this year, the defense authorities agreed to end their springtime large-scale exercise as part of efforts to help facilitate the denuclearization negotiations.
The nuclear disarmament talks, however, have been stalled since the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, Vietnam collapsed over the relief of sanctions against the communist regime. Trump and Kim had a surprise meeting on June 30 at the border village of Panmunjom within the demilitarized zone that divides the two Koreas and agreed to resume working-level denuclearization talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
American diplomatic and military leaders have rejected the North\u2019s objections to the joint drills.
\u201cI think we\u2019re doing exactly what President Trump promised Chairman Kim we would do with respect to those exercises,\u201d US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in an interview with the EWTN Catholic television network, a day after North Korea issued the statement about the exercise.
Adm. Phil Davidson, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, said that North Korea had no reason to protest about military exercises on the Korean Peninsula.
\u201cI can tell you my orders are to execute that exercise in April,\u201d Davidson said during the Aspen forum on Thursday. \u201cAnd I\u2019ll say this about North Korean rhetoric: They have neither lowered nor raised their own exercise profile from before this negotiation \u2026 so they have little to complain about.\u201d
Officials from Seoul\u2019s Defense Ministry said that the Alliance19-2 is to proceed but the term \u201calliance\u201d would be dropped in a move not to provoke the North. Instead, the exercise would be called a drill aimed at evaluating the South Korean military\u2019s capability to take over wartime command authority from the US military.
\u201cThe exercise is aimed at testing and evaluating the initial operational capability of South Korean generals\u2019 operational control of allied forces during wartime,\u201d a Defense Ministry source told Arab News, asking not to be named.
To that end, a South Korean four-star general will oversee the joint exercise for the first time with the chief of US Forces Korea (USFK) serving as deputy commander.
About 28,500 American soldiers are stationed in South Korea, which remains technically at war with nuclear-armed North Korea.
Currently, the head of USFK is supposed to take operational control of both US and South Korean troops in the case of war. The USFK commander concurrently serves as chief of the Combined Forces Command (CFC) and the United Nations Command (UNC).
In October last year, the defense ministers of the two countries agreed to hand over more responsibility to South Korea for its national defense by 2022.
Both sides agreed to keep the CFC in place after the transfer of operational control, but the command will be under the leadership of a South Korean four-star general, with a US commander assuming a supporting role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
North Korea’s threat:<\/strong>
North Korea has threatened that the country will drop the nuclear talks<\/strong> with the US if it continues the military exercise with South Korea.
Reason:<\/strong>
The reason cited by South Korea is the exercise will affect the Democratic People\u2019s Republic of Korea (DPRK) -U.S. <\/strong>working-level negotiations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"South Korean and US troops will conduct a scheduled joint training exercise next month but in a low-key manner, a senior presidential security adviser from South Korea has confirmed. Daily Current Affairs Quiz 2019 This is despite warnings by North Korea that the exercise may affect the resumption of denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang.\u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":3961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[69,58,218],"class_list":["post-3960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-current-affairs-articles","tag-defence-current-affairs","tag-international-current-affairs","tag-joint-training-exercise"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3960"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3962,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3960\/revisions\/3962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gkseries.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}