On February 22, well-informed sources said that the South Korean and US militaries decided to postpone announcing the timing of this year's large-scale spring exercise due to disagreements on the level of field training deployment.
The two sides initially planned to announce the plan at a joint press conference on February 25, but this plan was postponed after Washington disagreed with Seoul's proposal to minimize field training within the framework of the Freedom Shield exercise.
This large-scale exercise is held every spring according to a full-scale war scenario, in the context of two allies seeking to improve their readiness to deal with North Korea's growing nuclear and weapons programs.
Meanwhile, under the administration of President Lee Jae Myung, Seoul is seeking to narrow down the scale of the alliance's field training, which is considered a move to appease Pyongyang.
The postponement announcement is due to coordination issues related to field training. The South Korean side wants to reduce the scale of this content, but the US side expressed caution," a military source said.
Freedom Shield exercises scheduled for March will be conducted normally," a South Korean Ministry of National Defense official noted, emphasizing that the content focuses on verifying capabilities to ensure the transfer of wartime combat command to the South Korean military - which is still held by US forces.
Observers believe that South Korea's proposal to reduce training may be related to the reality within the framework of last year's Ulchi Freedom Shield summer exercise, when the two sides only conducted half of the approximately 40 field training events as planned, and the rest was additionally organized until the end of the year.
