South Korea, United States, and Japan Joint Air Exercises amid North Korean Threats

The militaries of South Korea, the US, and Japan conducted their first trilateral air drills on Sunday (October 22) in response to North Korea's growing nuclear threat, South Korea's air force said.

The training, which was held near the Korean Peninsula, aimed to implement previous agreements between the three countries.

The three countries want to enhance defense cooperation and joint response capabilities to North Korean threats, the countries' air forces said in a statement.

The drills involved nuclear-capable B-52 bombers from America and fighter jets from South Korea and Japan, the statement said.

South Korea and Japan are America's main allies in Asia, together hosting about 80,000 American troops.

The three countries regularly hold trilateral maritime drills, such as anti-submarine or missile defense drills, but Sunday's drills marked the first time Japan, the US, and South Korea conducted trilateral air drills.

In South Korea, expanding military exercises with Japan is a sensitive issue, as many still harbor strong resentment towards Japan's brutal 1910–1945 colonial rule on the Korean Peninsula.

But advances in North Korea's nuclear program have prompted South Korea's conservative president, Yoon Suk Yeol, to address long-standing disputes with Japan and step up trilateral security cooperation with America and Japan.

In August, President Yoon, US President Joe Biden, and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida met at Camp David in the first trilateral summit and agreed to increase their defense cooperation to confront the North Korean nuclear threat.

The three leaders decided to hold annual trilateral exercises and, by the end of the year, begin implementing real-time missile warning data sharing in North Korea.

Sunday's drills could prompt an angry response from North Korea, which has long been angry at US exercises with South Korea, calling them invasion rehearsals and retaliating with missile tests.

North Korea denounced the Camp David accords and accused the leaders of the US, South Korea, and Japan of planning to provoke a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called Yoon, Biden, and Kishida the “gang bosses” of the three countries.

Concerns about North Korea's nuclear program have grown after the country enacted a law allowing the preventive use of nuclear weapons last year and has since openly threatened to use them in potential conflict with the United States and South Korea.