Trump cites 'good relationship' with North's Kim in post announcing reduction in South-U.S. drills

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump noted his “good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Sunday while announcing that he had personally ordered a reduction in South Korea-U.S. joint military exercises.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote that the exercises are costly — a repeated complaint — and also claimed that South Korean President Lee Jae Myung had declined a request to cooperate on Iran’s denuclearization.

“Based on my very good relationship with [Kim  Jong-un], of North Korea, I am not happy with the fact that the United States has, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea,” he wrote.

“These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” he continued, referring to North Korea.

"Therefore, and based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!”

Trump’s post came ahead of the Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise, which started on Monday and will run through Aug. 27. The UFS is split into a command post exercise and a field training exercise involving actual forces, with the latter including 14 battalion-level-or-larger drills, down from 17 last year.

As South Korea and the United States released the exercise plan on Aug. 10, it remains unclear exactly when the reduction will take place or if it already has. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff have also characterized the reduction as a rescheduling rather than a scale-back.

The U.S. president has repeatedly signaled his discomfort with the joint exercises. After holding a summit with Kim in Singapore on June 12, 2018, Trump called them “provocative” and said that the allies would “stop the war games,” which would save the United States “a fortune.” Drills were subsequently adjusted or postponed on multiple occasions.

North Korea, for its part, has long denounced the joint exercises as rehearsals for a “northward invasion.”

The day before his latest post, Trump shared a photo of himself with Kim, writing that they “get along GREAT!” Analysts read this as another conciliatory signal toward Pyongyang, apparently made to restart U.S.-North Korea talks.

But Trump’s post from Sunday sits awkwardly alongside his accelerating “alliance modernization” push that has defined his second-term administration’s approach to South Korea — an effort focused on strengthening allies’ roles to deter China.

Since the onset of the country’s war with Iran, the United States has also shown a tendency to concentrate its forces across key regions. As a result, many expect Washington to formally extend this “strategic flexibility” to U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) as well by expanding its role to include countering China. 

Ahead of the UFS, the U.S. Eighth Army, which is responsible for the USFK, stated that the drills would “demonstrate the alliance’s ability to rapidly project combat power and secure key terrain within the First Island Chain.”

China’s core anti-access/area denial, or A2/AD, strategy for countering the United States in the Pacific centers on restricting U.S. power projection within the First Island Chain, which runs from the Japanese archipelago through Taiwan and the Philippines. The U.S. Eighth Army’s framing, then, suggests that this exercise — and the alliance’s goals more broadly — has expanded to cover contingencies across the Indo-Pacific.

Trump, however, explained the order to scale back the exercises through a lens focused on North Korea relations and financial cost rather than alliance modernization or deterrence against China.

In his latest post on Truth Social, the U.S. president raised a separate grievance, suggesting South Korea had been reluctant to cooperate on the Iran nuclear issue.

“While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!’” he wrote. He did not specify which form of cooperation he had requested. 

During the Iran war, Trump has repeatedly pressed allies and partners with requests — including dispatching warships to the Strait of Hormuz and contributing to postwar reconstruction funds — and this latest complaint may reflect similar frustration. Analysts also state that it is significant that Trump raised the issue in the same post addressing the joint exercises, which directly affect South Korea’s security posture.

BY YOO JEE-HYE [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]