South Korea, US and Japan Hold First Joint Aerial Exercise
The South Korean, US and Japanese militaries conducted their first-ever trilateral aerial exercise on October 22 in response to growing North Korean nuclear threats, South Korea's air force said.
The training held near the Korean Peninsula follows the three countries' earlier agreement to increase defense cooperation and boost their joint response capabilities against North Korean threats, the air force said in a statement.
The exercise involved a nuclear-capable B-52 bomber from the United States and fighter jets from South Korea and Japan, the statement said.
South Korea and Japan are both key US allies in Asia, and together host about 80,000 American troops.
The three countries have occasionally held trilateral exercises at sea, such as anti-submarine or missile defense exercises, but the latest training marked the first trilateral aerial exercise.
In South Korea, expanding military exercises with Japan is a sensitive issue, because many are still angry about Japan's brutal 1910-45 rule over the Korean Peninsula.
But the North's advancing nuclear program has pushed South Korea's conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, to move beyond historical arguments with Japan and strengthen security cooperation with the US and Japan.
In August, Yoon, US President Joe Biden and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met in the US for their countries' first stand-alone trilateral summit and agreed to strengthen their defense cooperation to deal with North Korea's nuclear threats.
The three leaders decided to hold annual trilateral exercises and put into operation by year's end the sharing of real-time missile warning data on North Korea.
The aerial exercise could draw a furious response from North Korea, which has long said that US training exercises with South Korea are an invasion rehearsal and often responds with missile tests. The North criticized the August agreement, accusing the US, South Korean and Japanese leaders of plotting nuclear war provocations on the Korean Peninsula.
Worries about North Korea's nuclear program have deepened after it introduced a law that authorizes the preemptive use of nuclear weapons last year and has since openly threatened to use them in potential conflicts with the US and South Korea.
