South Korea and the United States will begin a major combined military exercise this week to strengthen their joint defense readiness in the face of evolving North Korean military threats, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said Sunday.The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise based on an all-out war scenario is set to take place from Aug. 19-29, featuring the main computer simulation-based command post exercise, concurrent field training and civil defense drills.The JCS said the exercise will further strengthen the ROK-U.S. alliance's capability and readiness to respond to any provocations and defend against North Korea's weapons of mass destruction by conducting multi-domain exercises utilizing a variety of assets, including land, sea, air, cyber and space.The allies' exercise comes amid growing concerns over Pyongyang's continued weapons development push, highlighted by its launches of 37 ballistic missiles this year alone, and heightened cross-border tensions from the North's recent trash balloon campaign.The allies said this year's exercise will reflect threats across all domains, including those posed by North Korean missiles, GPS jamming and cyberattacks, as well as lessons learned from recent armed conflicts.The exercise will be similar in scale to the previous year, involving some 19,000 South Korean troops.It will include 48 field training events, such as amphibious landing and live-fire drills, up from 38 field events conducted last year. The number of brigade-level exercises will also increase to 17 this year, compared with four from the previous year.The North has long denounced the allies' joint exercises as a rehearsal for an invasion against it and has a track record of staging weapons tests in response. South Korea and the United States have rejected the accusation, describing their drills as defensive in nature.During his visit to a western front-line unit last week, JCS Chairman Adm. Kim Myung-soo ordered troops to retaliate immediately in case of any provocations, saying the North is likely to use the allies' exercise as a pretext to stage provocations.Source: Yonhap News Agency