What is Key Resolve/Foal Eagle?
Updated 16:48, 04-Mar-2019
Zhang Yingqi
["china"]
00:47
Key Resolve/Foal Eagle, one of the world's largest war games, appears now to be history. 
The United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) have decided to end their decades-long joint military drills "to back diplomacy for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
But what is Key Resolve/Foal Eagle after all?
Key Resolve was previously known as "Reception, Staging, Onward Movement, Integration" or RSOI, which is an annual command post exercise held by the U.S. Forces Korea with the ROK Armed Forces.
It was combined with another annual military drill Foal Eagle in 2001, and has been held every year since then. 
Foal Eagle in 2017. /Photo provided by Vision China Group

Foal Eagle in 2017. /Photo provided by Vision China Group

In 2008, RSOI was renamed Key Resolve, in which U.S. troops, mainly from the Pacific Command, are mobilized to beef up the defense of the ROK. 
Foal Eagle is said to be a combined field training exercise held annually by the ROK Armed Forces and the U.S. Armed Forces under the auspices of the Combined Forces Command.
In Foal Eagle, which has been held for some 40 years, the two allies simulate how to respond to a potential nuclear attack from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). 
Pyongyang regards the war games as a provocative escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula. 
In response to the DPRK's goodwill gesture of dismantling some of its nuclear facilities, the ROK and the U.S. downgraded their annual war games last year.