Choi Hyun-soo, a spokeswoman for South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense, said the North Korean military was notified on Tuesday of the schedule and “defensive nature” of the drills. Such notices are delivered through Panmunjom, a contact point established on the North-South border when the Korean War was halted in a truce in 1953.
The drills are always high profile, largely because the United States and South Korea seek to use them as a statement of unity and purpose in the defense of South Korea against the North. Because of that, the exercises always seem to anger North Korea.
“Our combined exercises are defense-oriented, and there is no reason for North Korea to view them as provocation,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Logan, a Pentagon spokesman. “These routine training exercises are not conducted in response to any D.P.R.K. provocations or the current political situation on the peninsula,” he added, using the abbreviation for the North’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
This year, the exercises are bound to be even more delicate, as the Trump administration rushes to prepare for first-of-their-kind talks between an American president and a North Korean leader.
White House officials are scrambling to figure out how Mr. Trump will handle the negotiations, which will pose a stiff challenge to an administration that has built its North Korea policy around imposing crippling sanctions, backed by the threat of military action. Before the announcement of talks this month, there had been little planning for how a negotiation between Washington and Pyongyang would unfold.
The South Korean and United States militaries usually hold the exercises from late February through April.
The Key Resolve exercise is largely a computer-simulated war game, while Foal Eagle has typically involved large-scale ground, air, naval and special operations field exercises, including amphibious-landing drills.
The allied militaries did not immediately reveal when the exercises would end or whether any American aircraft carriers would participate, as they have in the past.
The South Korean news media has speculated that this year’s drills will be shortened, ending before Mr. Kim and President Moon Jae-in are scheduled to hold their summit meeting in late April. Mr. Trump has agreed to meet with Mr. Kim by May.
At the height of the tensions between North Korea and the United States last year, the United States frequently dispatched strategic bombers on training missions over the peninsula, along with what Mr. Trump called an “armada” of aircraft carriers and other warships to surrounding waters, as part of Washington’s “maximum” pressure campaign.
The announcement about the exercises came as a senior North Korean official started unofficial talks with a delegation of former United States and South Korean officials in Finland. North Korean officials have held such informal talks periodically with former officials and scholars.
Washington said that the American participants, including Kathleen Stephens, the former ambassador to South Korea, were not representing the United States government. But this year’s meeting drew unusual attention because of its timing before the anticipated meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim.
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