Following the successful Joe Biden-Moon Jae-in summit on May 21, 2021, the Moon administration began backsliding on alliance commitments to military readiness. Specifically, President Moon said COVID-19 will likely make it difficult to conduct the annual ROK/U.S. Combined Forces Command (ROK/U.S. CFC) training in August. Moon likely has the naïve hope that forgoing this exercise will serve as a goodwill gesture to Pyongyang, helping to restart diplomacy with North Korea, yet this is unlikely. In fact, cancelling the annual training will further endanger South Korea.
