South Korea, US, Japan to hold 2nd trilateral Freedom Edge exercise this week

Seoul: South Korea, the US and Japan are set to begin their second trilateral multi-domain exercise on Wednesday, the South's Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said, in a display of joint deterrence against threats posed by North Korea amid its deepening alignment with Russia.

The three-day exercise will take place in international waters south of South Korea's southern resort island of Jeju, the JCS said, around four months after the inaugural exercise was conducted in accordance with an agreement reached by the leaders of the nations last year.

The second round of the Freedom Edge exercise will mobilise various warships and aircraft, including the US Navy's USS George Washington aircraft carrier as well as F-35 stealth fighters, the South's ROKS Seoae Ryu Seong-ryong destroyer and Japan's JS Haguro destroyer, Yonhap news agency reported.

The nuclear-powered USS George Washington is a supercarrier measuring 332 metres in length and 78 metres in width and has an 18,210-square-metre flight deck. It was redelivered to the US Navy last year after a six-year overhaul.

"This iteration demonstrates state-of-the-art air defence capabilities with the integration of 5th generation fighters into a sophisticated multi-domain defence infrastructure. Their incorporation ... ensures that their combined military and self-defence forces can operate together at the highest level against any threat," the US Indo-Pacific Command said in a release.

The JCS said the exercise will span across an array of areas including air defence, ballistic missile defence, anti-submarine warfare, maritime interdiction and defensive cyber training.

"The three nations have strongly condemned North Korea's provocative acts, including the test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), that threaten peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and within the region," the JCS said. "The exercise reflects the will to deter and respond to such threats."

The North launched the new Hwasong-19 ICBM on October 31 and called it an "ultimate" version of its long-range missile series. The missile reached the highest altitude and flew for the longest time.

The drills came amid growing concerns that North Korea's troop deployment to Russia could escalate Moscow's protracted war with Ukraine.

In August last year, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, US President Joe Biden and then Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida agreed to hold "annual, named, multidomain" trilateral exercises on a regular basis during their summit at Camp David as part of efforts to deter evolving nuclear and missile threats from North Korea.

In July this year, the defence chiefs of the three nations signed the Trilateral Security Cooperation Framework, in a move seen as formalising their security cooperation and strengthening cooperation against North Korea's nuclear and missile threats, including conducting regular joint drills.

North Korea has long denounced joint military drills as rehearsals for an invasion and used them as a pretext for provocations. Following the first Freedom Edge exercise in June, North Korea criticised the drills as an attempt to strengthen a US-led military bloc.