South Korea and the United States are to complete their annual joint military drill Foal Eagle this week, officials here said Thursday, amid Pyongyang's continued threat of retaliation.

The allies' field training exercise kicked off on March 2 aimed at improving the combined forces' operation and combat capabilities against threats from North Korea. It is scheduled to end on Friday, according to the Combined Forces Command and Seoul's defense ministry officials.

"The tactical training has been carried out without a hitch," said a CFC official, noting that the exercise mobilized about 200,000 Korean and 3,700 American troops and has involved a set of land, sea and air maneuvers as originally planned.

Five countries -- Australia, Canada, Denmark, France and Britain -- have participated in the drill, with the Neutral Supervisory Commission observing and monitoring them to ensure they do not break the Armistice Agreement signed at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War.

Drawing attention was the participation of the USS Fort Worth, a 3,450-ton Freedom-class littoral combat ship, in the drill for the first time.

The combat ship, complete with surface warfare mission package capabilities, is capable of getting closer to shore than larger ships during diverse scenarios, which brings speed, maneuverability and shallow draft to this exercise, according to the U.S. navy.

Foal Eagle is one of two major annual exercises between the allies, along with the computerized command post exercise, called Key Resolve. The two-week war game ended in mid-March.

Expressing a strong opposition to the exercises and issuing threats of harsh retaliation, North Korea had fired rounds of rockets multiple times during the exercise period, with the latest in early April when Pyongyang test-fired four short-range projectiles believed to be the KN-02 ground-to-ship missiles into the West Sea.

"The level of the North's provocations during the exercise period does not seem to be as intense as last year," an official of Seoul's Joint Chiefs of Staff said on condition of anonymity.

"But we are closely monitoring their moves," he said, pointing to chances of live-fire drills or test-firing rockets to mark the foundation of the North's military that falls on Saturday.

The North has repeated its long-held claims that the exercises are "dress rehearsals" for a northward invasion with nuclear weapons, while Seoul and Washington have stressed the exercises have been staged on a regular basis and they are defensive in nature. (Yonhap)