US, S Korea scale down war games

Seoul, April 24 

As North and South Korea prepare for their first summit in more than a decade this Friday, there is something different in the air in Korean peninsula.

Korea has for decades been the site of the world’s largest annual military maneuvers between the US and its ally South Korea. This year’s exercises began on April 1 and are expected to continue through the end of the month, possibly longer. Normally they begin in March or earlier.

At their height in the late 1980s, 2,00,000 troops participated in Team Spirit, making them the largest annual maneuvers in the world. The head count for Foal Eagle/Key Resolve — as the exercises are known today was quite lower.

The USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier and its battle group, which joined in last year  and drew a threat of “merciless, ultra-precision strikes” from the North, were absent.  The lower-key exercises have so far generated nothing like the heated threats of last year. Getting a postponement of the maneuvers appears to have been South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s idea ahead of the meet.

Moon told reporters in December he urged Washington to put the war games off until after South Korea’s Pyeongchang Winter Olympics and Paralympics, which wrapped up in March. 

In exchange, North Korea appears to be observing a temporary halt in missile launches for a moment. — AP