South Korea, Japan, US Announce Trilateral 'Freedom Edge' Drills for Sept 9–11 Targeting DPRK Threats

South Korea, Japan, and the United States announced August 27–28, 2026 that they will hold the trilateral Freedom Edge exercise September 9–11 in international waters south and east of Jeju Island, a multi-domain drill including maritime missile defense, air and air-defense operations, anti-submarine warfare, and cyber defense explicitly framed as testing readiness against North Korea's missile and nuclear weapons threats. Freedom Edge traces its origin to the August 2023 Camp David trilateral summit and has run annually since 2024. The announcement comes despite President Trump's order to scale back the major bilateral US-South Korea joint exercise and the subsequent cancellation of a planned joint Marine Corps drill — both conciliatory gestures toward Kim Jong-un — underscoring that the reduced bilateral drill posture has not extended to the trilateral track with Japan.