South Korea and US going underground for army drills
Officials say the exercises will reflect ‘realistic’ scenarios of response to threats from the North
SENIOR South Korean and US defence officials and military commanders will descend into nuclear bunkers hidden deep in the mountains of the Korean peninsula this week to prepare for war.
Their war games will be computersimulated, while above ground army battalions and Air Force pilots will test their battlefield readiness and ability to work together in defending South Korea from a hypothetical attack.
The largest joint South Korean and US military drills in five years come at a time of escalating tensions with Kim Jong-un’s regime, which has tested an unprecedented volley of missiles in the past year, and regional uncertainties over China’s territorial ambitions.
Defence officials say the 11-day “Freedom Shield” and “Warrior Shield” exercises will reflect “realistic” scenarios to respond to the growing nuclear threat from North Korea, as well as drawing lessons from the war in Ukraine.
The training would be executed in wartime positions and locations, said retired Lt Gen Chun In-bum, who estimated he had participated in close to 100 joint drills during his 35 years of service in the South Korean military.
For senior military planners and strategists this means barely seeing the light of day and dining out on army MRES (meals ready-to-eat) while hunkered in the depths of the earth in command centres designed to survive nuclear bomb blasts.
South Korea has a network of subterranean mountain hideouts, built to protect the military command structure in times of crisis.
The most well-known, codenamed “Command Post Tango”, is a granite complex in the northern Gyeonggi province that reportedly has multiple layers of blast doors and high-tech communications equipment linking it to big US bases around the world.
Lt Gen Chun said the temperature in the bunkers was controlled mechanically and naturally.
“You are able to realise why frogs and snakes don’t freeze to death in the winter,” he said.
“These places are decompressed so that it’s protected for chemical warfare, and it can fully operate on its own, which means people can sleep, eat and s--- there.”
The main goal of the exercises is “to maintain proficiency and train the commanders and staff under a wartime mission”, he added.
Joint exercises on the Korean Peninsula were massively scaled back during the pandemic and also under the last administration in an effort to maintain a détente with Pyongyang that collapsed in 2019.
The resumption of the exercise has infuriated Pyongyang, which has likened the drills to an act of war.
US and South Korean forces have insisted the training is defensive in nature. Lt Gen Chun predicted North Korea could resort to the “old tactic” of using the exercises as a pretext to test missiles.
“It’s a shame that the North Koreans are using this as an excuse to conduct these provocations and to dupe their own population as to why they need to sacrifice their human happiness for a non-existent threat,” he said.
During his participation in many drills “not a single time have I tried to kill the Kim leadership, assassinate them, nor strike the first strike, not a single time. We don’t do that,” he said.