Trying for Third Front? US, Korea and Japan Hold Unprecedented Three-Way Aerial Drill

The brief thaw in ties between Pyongyang and Washington built on a close personal rapport between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump quickly collapsed under Joe Biden, with the DPRK ramping up its missile testing in response to a spate of joint US, South Korean and Japanese military exercises near the nation’s borders.

The United States, the Republic of Korea (South Korea’s official name) and Japan carried out their first-ever three-way joint aerial drill south of the Korean Peninsula on Sunday.

The drill –dubbed the ‘Spirit of Camp David’ exercise – saw American, Japanese and South Korean fighter escorts fly an escort mission alongside a US Air Force nuclear-capable B-52 strategic bomber, with the South Korean Air Force characterizing the show of force as a signal of joint security cooperation “against North Korea’s escalating nuclear and missile threats.”

The US fighter jet complement consisted of F-16 Fighting Falcons, with South Korea deploying F-15Ks, and Japan flying Mitsubishi F-2 fighters.

The drills were held over waters overlapping both the South Korean and Japanese air defense identification zones.

The three countries promised to conduct further “annual, named, multi-domain trilateral exercises on a regular basis.”

The B-52 Stratofortress bomber involved in Sunday’s drill landed in South Korea for the first time ever earlier this week. The bomber took part in a separate drill with ROK Air Force stealth jets on Tuesday, carrying out a flight over Seoul Air Base during an air show before landing at an air base in Cheongju, about 115 km southeast of the South Korean capital.

Sunday’s aerial exercise follows joint US-South Korean-Japanese maritime drills in Korean waters two weeks ago – the first of their kind since 2016. Those drills involvement from warships of the USS Ronald Reagan carrier strike group, a Japanese destroyer and an Aegis air and missile defense system-equipped South Korean vessel.

Separately this week, South Korean officials revealed that the US and South Korean Navy warships had conducted a two-week anti-submarine drill off Guam known as ‘Silent Shark’.

President Joe Biden hosted South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at Camp David in August, hailing a “new era of cooperation” between the three countries and the strengthening of a trilateral alliance against North Korea, including deepened defense cooperation and technology sharing.

North Korean media warned Friday that the DPRK would reserve the right to target any US strategic nuclear forces stationed in South Korea, and characterized Sunday’s exercise as an “”intentional provocative maneuver for nuclear war” by Washington.

A week earlier, Pyongyang warned that it was ready to respond to any US provocations in connection with the deployment of the US carrier strike group in the region.

The DPRK officially proclaimed itself a nuclear power in September 2022 and published details on its nuclear doctrine, which allows the country to use its nuclear weapons in the event of enemy nuclear aggression, or a potentially “fatal” conventional attack. The doctrine emphasizes that the North Korea’s “powerful means for defending the sovereignty, territorial integrity and fundamental interests of the state” is designed to prevent “a war in the Korean Peninsula and the northeast Asia region and ensur[e] the strategic stability of the world.”

North Korea’s relations with the US and South Korea have worsened dramatically over the past two-and-a-half years, with the personal rapport between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump replaced by coolness and outright hostility between Kim and Biden as the latter moved to resume large-scale US military drills in East Asia. Last year’s South Korean presidential elections strained tensions further, with the new government officially reverting to referring to the DPRK as an “enemy” state.

During his two-day visit to Pyongyang this week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed Moscow’s “serious concern about the increase in military activity” on the Korean Peninsula “by the United States, Japan and South Korea, as well as Washington’s policy of transferring elements of strategic infrastructure, including its nuclear elements, to the region.”

Russia, Lavrov stressed, is in favor of regular talks “without any preconditions” to ease tensions on the peninsula.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry has characterized the US, NATO and Washington’s Asian allies as a “cancer tumor” that puts the international UN-based order in jeopardy.