South Korea, U.S. shorten UFS military exercise
South Korea and the United States will shorten Ulchi Freedom Shield and scale back some field exercises at Washington's request.
U.S. Forces Korea personnel move about in front of military vehicles at Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, Gyeonggi, on Aug. 17, as South Korean and U.S. military authorities began Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS), an annual joint exercise aimed at defending the Korean Peninsula in the event of a contingency.
YONHAP
South Korea's military authorities on Wednesday said it will curtail the duration and scale of the ongoing South Korea-U.S. joint exercise at Washington's request.
The Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise, which began Monday, will be adjusted to run through Friday instead of the original Aug. 27. Some field training exercises will also be scaled back, per the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The U.S. Department of Defense shortly afterwards confirmed the cutbacks as well. Despite the adjustments, however, the Pentagon said essential readiness and training objectives would be preserved and that there would be no disruption to U.S. military training goals.
The UFS exercise is one of the two major recurring South Korea-U.S. joint drills, along with the spring Freedom Shield exercise, consisting of a simulation-based command post exercise (CPX) linked with field training exercises, with the CPX divided into two parts — the first focused on defense and the second on practicing counteroffensive operations. Per the recent updates, South Korea and the U.S. will be proceeding only with the first part of the exercise this year.
Pyongyang has denounced the joint drills as war rehearsals, and reducing or canceling such exercises has often been seen as a precondition for dialogue.
On Sunday, Trump posted on Truth Social that he instructed U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth “to substantially reduce” joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States, claiming that he was “not happy” with the drills and citing his “good relationship” with Kim.
Foreign Minister Cho Hyun on Wednesday said that South Korea was not notified in advance of U.S. President Donald Trump's recent remarks, including on the reduction of the joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises.
"What President Trump stated on Truth Social this time was something that neither our government nor U.S. government officials knew about in advance at all," he said.
On the reduction of the joint exercises, Cho added, "I understand that Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back has been in close consultation with the U.S. side since the content came out on Truth Social. Because our minister has been consulting with them, I don't think this was a unilateral notification [from the U.S. side]."
A day after Trump's Truth Social post calling for reduced South Korea-U.S. drills, U.S. Forces Korea Commander Gen. Xavier Brunson held an unscheduled meeting with Ahn at the Ministry of National Defense in Yongsan District, central Seoul, the contents of which were not immediately disclosed.
BY KIM JI-HYE [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]
Update, Aug 19: Added details about the U.S. Pentagon's response, an outline of the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise and the response from the foreign minister
This article was originally written in Korean and translated by a bilingual reporter with the help of generative AI tools. It was then edited by a native English-speaking editor. All AI-assisted translations are reviewed and refined by our newsroom.
