North Korea’s Russia experience shapes upcoming US-South Korea exercise

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s growing military partnership with Russia and the battlefield experience its troops have gained in the war with Ukraine is shaping how U.S. and South Korean forces prepare for a potential conflict on the peninsula, a senior United Nations Command officer said Thursday.

Australian army Lt. Gen. Scott Winter, deputy commander of U.N. Command, said the allies are accounting for Pyongyang’s increased use of technology, its ballistic-missile development and lessons learned by North Korean troops supporting Russia as they prepare for Monday’s start of Ulchi Freedom Shield.

The command is “very conscious” that North Korea has used its relationship with Moscow as an opportunity to test ballistic missile systems and gain contemporary battlefield experience, Winter told reporters during a briefing on the exercise at the Press Center in Seoul.

North Korea has sent as many as 14,000 troops to support Russia, which has been at war with Ukraine since February 2022, according to reports citing Ukrainian intelligence.

Ulchi Freedom Shield is designed to account for these evolving capabilities and experiences, Winter said.

His remarks came after North Korea launched two ballistic missiles in the days leading up to the 10-day exercise, prompting questions about whether Pyongyang intended the tests as warnings to Washington and Seoul.

Winter cautioned against making that assumption.

U.N. Command closely monitors all North Korean launches but is careful not to “conflate what might be routine testing into some form of strategic messaging,” he said.

The command has nevertheless been “incredibly consistent” in condemning North Korean provocations, Winter said.

Both missiles, launched Wednesday and Aug. 6 off North Korea’s eastern coast, fell into the Sea of Japan, also known as the East Sea, outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, according to the South Korean and Japanese governments.

Winter declined to provide details about what the allies have learned from the launches, saying they remain under analysis.

Ulchi Freedom Shield is one of two major military exercises carried out annually by the U.S. and South Korea. The other is Freedom Shield, which took place in March.

The allies describe the exercises as defensive and said in a joint release Monday that Ulchi Freedom Shield will strengthen readiness through “combined, joint, all-domain operations.”

About 18,000 South Korean troops will participate, roughly the same number as last year, Capt. Jang Do-young, a Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman, said Monday.

South Korean government agencies will conduct wartime readiness training and field drills simultaneously to test national emergency preparedness, according to the joint statement.

The number of combined field exercises involving battalion-size units or larger is expected to decline from 17 last year to 14 this year, according to South Korean media reports.

Winter said the number of individual training events does not necessarily indicate an exercise’s scale or complexity.

He cited a joint river-crossing operation by the U.S. Eighth Army and South Korean army, describing it as among the most complex land operations carried out on a modern battlefield.

U.N. Command members states will observe the exercise.

Winter’s comments came after reports that South Korean police detained two former Chinese service members Monday on suspicion of illegally gathering information about joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises.

He declined to discuss the cases but said there “continue to be timely reminders” about the importance of operational security.