This article is over 4 years old 
 
 This year's exercises come as families separated by Korean war enjoy first reunion for three years 
 
 South Korea has kicked off its annual joint military exercises with the US despite vocal opposition from North Korea. The drills will test a recent improvement in cross-border ties. 
 
 The start of this year's military exercises overlaps with the first reunion for more than three years of families divided by the Korean war – an event that has raised hopes of greater North-South co-operation. 
 
 Pyongyang had initially insisted that the joint exercises be postponed until after the reunion finishes on Tuesday, but Seoul refused and – in a rare concession – the North allowed the family gathering to go ahead as scheduled. 
 
 The annual "Key Resolve" and "Foal Eagle" drills – routinely condemned by North Korea as rehearsals for invasion – will last until 18 April and involve a combined total of 12,700 US troops and many more from South Korea. 
 
 Key Resolve lasts just over a week and is a largely computer-simulated exercise, while the eight-week Foal Eagle drill involves air, ground and naval field training. Seoul and Washington insist they are both defensive in nature, playing out various scenarios to combat a North Korean invasion. 
 
 Last year's drills fuelled a protracted surge in military tensions, with Pyongyang threatening a pre-emptive nuclear strike, and nuclear-capable US stealth bombers making dummy runs over the Korean peninsula. 
 
 US defence officials have indicated – in an apparent effort to mollify the North – that this year's drills will be toned down, with no aircraft carrier and no strategic bombers. 
 
 However, the South Korean defence ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok insisted on Monday that there would be "no readjustment" in the scale of the manoeuvres. 
 
 Saturday's edition of the North's ruling party newspaper Rodong Sinmun slammed the exercises as a "vicious attempt" to undo the goodwill generated by the family reunion. 
 
 Such rhetoric was only to be expected, and analysts say the North is unlikely to go much further for fear of jeopardising the credit it sees itself as having banked by agreeing to the divided family meetings. 
 
 "The North's strategy is clearly to gain some economic benefit on the back of the family reunion," said Ahn Chan-il, director of the World Institute for North Korea Studies in Seoul. 
 
 In particular, North Korea wants the South to resume regular tours to its Mount Kumgang resort, which provided a much-needed source of hard currency in the past. 
 
 South Korea suspended the tours after a female tourist was shot dead by North Korean security guards in 2008. 
 
 The South Korean president, Park Geun-hye, has made it clear that Seoul considers the reunion a first step – suggesting her administration is willing to consider some reciprocity down the road. 
 
 John Delury, a professor at Seoul's Yonsei University, believes Park and the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, are at a point where their respective national interests could dovetail to their mutual benefit. 
 
 "Once she begins to act with resolve things could move quickly if Kim is ready to play ball," Delury wrote on the closely followed North-Korea-focused website 38 North. 
 
 The North's threat to cancel the reunion over the joint drills was withdrawn during talks earlier this month that marked the highest-level official contact between the two Koreas for seven years. 
 
 Both sides agreed to keep the dialogue going, although without any specific timetable or agenda. Any further progress is likely to be limited. 
 
 While there are numerous confidence-building measures that could be put in place, nothing is going to escape the shadow cast by North Korea's nuclear weapons programme. 
 
 Pyongyang would like direct talks with Washington, but the US secretary of state, John Kerry, reiterated during a recent visit to Seoul that there could be no dialogue until the North showed a tangible commitment towards denuclearisation. 
 
 For the moment, therefore, Seoul and Pyongyang are alone at the table, but the fact they are there together at all is a step forward. 
 
 In a further goodwill gesture, South Korea on Monday offered to send vaccine and medical equipment to help contain an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the North. 
 
 The offer came days after the North confirmed cases of the highly contagious livestock disease at a pig farm in a suburb of Pyongyang. ||||| South Korea-US military drills begin 
 
 The military exercises involve air, ground and naval drills 
 
 Joint military drills between South Korea and the US have begun, amid rare family reunions between North and South Korean relatives separated for decades. 
 
 The annual military exercises will last until 18 April. 
 
 They will involve Key Resolve, a computer-based simulation, and Foal Eagle, which involves air, ground and naval drills. 
 
 Pyongyang is opposed to the drills and had previously threatened to cancel the reunions if the exercises went ahead. 
 
 The military drills will involve more than 12,500 US troops. 
 
 Apparent thaw 
 
 The US and South Korea describe the annual drills as defensive in nature, but Pyongyang has described them as "exercises of war". 
 
 Last year, the exercises led to a prolonged surge in tensions, with North Korea threatening pre-emptive nuclear strikes and attacks on South Korean and US targets. 
 
 The rhetoric this year has so far been relatively mild, but the drills are scheduled to last until April, and many here see them as the toughest test yet of whether ties between the two Koreas are warming, the BBC's Lucy Williamson in Seoul reports. 
 
 Speaking on Monday, South Korean Defence Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said: "As of now, there are no unusual movements from North Korea. We will only take action against North Korea if it makes provocations or denunciations". 
 
 Also on Monday, around 360 South Koreans met their North Korean relatives for the first time since the 1950-1953 Korean War, at a family reunion event in North Korea's Mount Kumgang resort. 
 
 Hundreds of North and South Korean relatives met for the first time in decades at the family reunion events 
 
 They were the second set of relatives chosen to attend the reunions, which come amid an apparent thaw in inter-Korean ties. 
 
 Many people were separated from their relatives by the division of the Korean peninsula after the Korean War. 
 
 Continue reading the main story Will there be a North Korean backlash? Family reunions have now fortunately moved forward. Yet so too have joint exercises. As a result, it is possible that when US military assets finally materialise in the region for Foal Eagle, North Korea could point to the overt rebuke of its goodwill, claim that it has no choice but to develop robust self-defences, and then subsequently revert to belligerence. 
 
 Pyongyang has been accused of using the family reunions, which are highly emotional events, as a bargaining chip. 
 
 North Korea has in the past cancelled the reunions after the South took actions it opposed - most recently in September. 
 
 In 2010, the programme was suspended after the North's shelling of a South Korean border island. 
 
 Meanwhile, South Korea also offered to assist the North with tackling an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease. 
 
 North Korean state media said that thousands of pigs had been affected by the disease. 
 
 South Korea, which has also been hit by outbreaks before, has offered to send aid, including medical goods and vaccines, officials said.
– North Korea formerly threatened to cancel the long-awaited family reunions between the two Koreas if South Korea went ahead with its annual joint military drills with the US. But as it stands, both events are happening simultaneously. As the six-day reunion continued today, the military drills began, the BBC reports; they will continue until April 18, and involve roughly 12,500 US troops. As always, Washington and Seoul insist they are simply defensive, while Pyongyang calls them "exercises of war." Even so, the rhetoric has been pretty low-key this year compared to last, when North Korea repeatedly threatened to attack South Korean and US targets over the drills. The Guardian reports that US officials have suggested things will be a little more low-key on their end as well: no aircraft carriers or strategic bombers are to factor into the war games. Some believe North Korea's reaction to the drills will shed light on whether tensions between the two Koreas are truly thawing, as the family reunions and other recent developments suggest they may be. "As of now, there are no unusual movements from North Korea," said a South Korean Defense Ministry spokesperson today. "We will only take action against North Korea if it makes provocations or denunciations." Experts say that, for Pyongyang, keeping calm is all about money. Specifically, the North would like the South to restart tours to the North's Mount Kumgang resort that, in the past, provided the North with an important source of income; the South put an end to the tours in 2008 after a female tourist was killed by North Korean security.