South Korea and the United States kicked off one of their joint, annual military exercises on Sunday, despite North Korea's vocal criticisms and uptick in military activity.
The sharply scaled down drills will run through August 20th.
Our defense ministry correspondent Kim Ji-yeon reports.
The South Korean and U.S. militaries hold their "Combined Command Post Training" for ten days starting Sunday.
Last week, South Korea and the U.S. conducted preliminary sessions in the run-up to their joint summertime training.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said the training, which is divided into two parts,... involves computer-based war simulations to verify South Korea's state of readiness for the future transfer of wartime operational control from Washington to Seoul.
Real military equipment and forces are not mobilized during the training.
For the first time, a South Korean general serves as the commander, and an American general takes on the role of a deputy.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff, operations command of South Korea's ground, naval and air force... as well as Combined Forces Command, U.S. Forces Korea... operations command of U.S. Indo-Pacific are participating in the training.
The name of the training was originally thought to be "nineteen-dash-two DongMaeng" -- a Korean word meaning 'alliance' -- but the name was changed considering North Korea's continued criticism of joint South Korea-U.S. military drills and the impact they may have on denuclearization talks.
Up until now, joint military exercises have been named Key Resolve, Foal Eagle, and Ulchi Freedom Guardian... but following the series of inter-Korean and North Korea-U.S. summits, they were scaled down as part of efforts to support diplomatic efforts for denuclearization.
In March, the "nineteen-dash-one DongMaeng" exercise replaced the Key Resolve exercise.
Kim Ji-yeon, Arirang News.