American-Korean War Games Fall Silent in Wake of Accidental Bombing of Civilian Area

SEOUL — The guns are silent on the first major American-Korean military exercises since President Trump’s inauguration. Planes are not dropping bombs, and cannons aren’t booming on warships offshore. Not to worry though, the American command advises, we’re still playing war games — without the noises of war.Reluctantly, as thousands of American and South Korean troops plunged into “Freedom Shield” for 10 days of the exercises staged annually in vast training areas south of the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas, the American command confirmed that the U.S. and Korean militaries “have agreed to pause all live-fire training until further notice.”The terse announcement, after American and Korean officers had proudly trumpeted “combined joint all-domain live field training exercises across the land, sea, air, cyber and space domains,” blamed the order to cease firing for real on what was discreetly called “a release of live munitions” that had “resulted in off-range damage on March 6.”The incident, in which a pair of South Korean KF-16 fighter planes dropped eight 500-pound bombs on a town near their intended mock target last week, injuring 15 people, sparked demands for completely halting the war games, due to go on for 10 days. The timing was “unfortunate,” as a military source put it, just as the South is roiled by right-left protests surrounding the impending fate of the impeached president, Yoon Suk-yeol.One thing was sure: “We can confirm that no U.S. Air Force aircraft were involved” in the mistaken bombing, the American command said. “The safety of the local community,” along with that of American and Korean forces, “is our top priority.” More than anything else, American and Korean commanders worry about the repercussions of the bombing incident on a society deeply divided between factions for and against the exercises.While the conservative Mr. Yoon, a staunch advocate of war games, awaits the ruling of the constitutional court on his impeachment, the National Police Agency is designating large portions of central Seoul near and around the court as “crime prevention zones.” In anticipation of enormous demonstrations by rightists and leftists, more than 100,000 policemen will be on duty nationwide, sure of mass outbursts of emotion that could explode into violence when the court makes up its mind whether to reinstate Mr. Yoon or oust him completely.“There are some socio-political implications,” a military source told the Sun, requesting anonymity. “We’re not firing anything, and we’re not flying over the Rodriguez range” where diplomats, politicians, and journalists in bygone years watched from a hillside as fighter planes bombed and strafed crags and slopes, and tanks and infantry maneuvered below.For sure, though, troops from both armies will stage a combat assault in the next day or so, a spokesman for the South’s defense ministry said. They’ll be jumping off helicopters, while navy vessels off the east coast train on preventing “proliferation” of weapons of mass destruction — all to the sounds of silence from their weapons.North Korea responded with rhetorical threats — and the first missile tests of Mr. Trump’s second presidency. The South Korean joint chiefs of staff reported North Korean gunners fired “multiple ballistic missiles” off the west coast into the Yellow Sea, on the opposite side of the Korean peninsula.As for what was going on below the DMZ, Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency blasted what it called “a dangerous provocative act” that might “spark off a physical conflict between the two sides.” North Korea’s “enemies,” KCNA said, were “scheming” to stage a “preventive attack” on the North’s nuclear facilities under “the guidelines on nuclear deterrence and nuclear operations.”Washington was still “engrossed in sanctions, pressure and confrontation,” KCNA said, despite “regime change” — a reference to Mr. Trump’s election and the transition in the “regime” in Washington.

American-Korean War Games Fall Silent in Wake of Accidental Bombing of Civilian Area

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