American artillery brigade soldiers participating in the U.S.-South Korea joint Ulchi Freedom Guardian drill take a break at a training ground in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, June 19, 2018. Korea Times file

The annual Ulchi civil defense exercise will kick off in full scale next month for a four-day run nationwide after the drills were held in a scaled-back manner in recent years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the interior ministry said Wednesday.

The upcoming 54th Ulchi exercise will kick off on Aug. 22, involving some 480,000 officials from about 4,000 city, county and ward governments, public institutions and others across the nation to inspect their readiness for war and other contingencies.

This year's event marks the first full-scale Ulchi drill in years after the annual exercise had been scaled down due to the pandemic.

The Ulchi exercise was launched in 1969 following a raid of North Korean commandos on the presidential residence in Seoul the previous year,

This year's exercise will include mock emergency summons, a drill to restore facilities, telecommunication and waterworks in the event of a North Korean missile attack, and training to counter GPS jamming in tandem with a combined South Korea-United States military exercise, the ministry said. (Yonhap)