S. Korea, US conduct large military exercise in Yellow Sea

S. Korea, US conduct large military exercise in Yellow Sea. March. 24, 2011 08:35. ysh1005@donga.com.

A large-scale South Korea-U.S. military exercise in the Yellow Sea seeks to prepare for North Korea`s use of nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, submarines and special forces to destroy or blockade major infrastructure in the South.

The South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command said Wednesday that the drill is part of the annual Foal Eagle drills that will continue through the end of April. A senior Seoul military official said the drill stems from the South Korean military’s awareness of the severity of the North’s asymmetric forces as proven in its torpedo attack on the South Korean warship Cheonan a year ago.

The command said a three-day exercise that began Tuesday was officially dubbed the “Combined Joint Logistics over the Shore,” or CJ LOTS. Washington used to hold the exercise alone in the East Sea but this year’s will be the first joint drill involving the command’s forces and logistics in a large scale.

The two allies chose the Yellow Sea, which has shallow waters and high tides, as the venue for the exercise because they want to conduct the drill under a worst-case scenario of the North’s surprise attack. The North seems bent on seeking ways to strike the South’s major ports by mobilizing all asymmetrical forces.

Concentrated along the South’s eastern and southern coasts, the ports provide the key entrances for U.S. augmentation forces to be deployed to the South in the event of war on the Korean Peninsula. If the North destroys the ports, this will delay or even block the arrival of additional U.S. troops, raising the importance of South Korean and U.S. forces practicing to build temporary port facilities for military logistics.

The size of the troops and equipment in the exercise resembles that of a real war. South Korea has deployed five naval vessels, 66 vehicles, oil supply equipment and 168 troops in the exercise in addition to 16 civilian vessels, including a 19,000-ton ship.

An official at the Combined Forces Command said Seoul has been leading the exercise from the planning stages in preparation for the planned transfer of wartime operational control to South Korea, adding that a South Korean admiral is playing the role of commander.