Trump seeks summit with North's Kim during Asia trip

U.S. President Donald Trump has directed his aides to pursue a summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as early as this fall, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday. 

The closed-door discussions reportedly centered on the possibility of Trump meeting Kim during an Asia trip in November, when the president is set to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Shenzhen, China.

Trump and Kim last met on June 30, 2019, in the truce village Panmunjom in the demilitarized zone, where Trump briefly stepped into North Korean territory, becoming the first sitting U.S. president to do so. That encounter followed their two formal summits in Singapore in June 2018 and Hanoi in February 2019. No lasting deals, including the North's denuclearization, were made in any of the meetings, however, and North Korea has continued to grow its nuclear arsenal. The two leaders have not met in person since.

On the same day, South Korea's military authorities said it would 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 UFS is an annual large-scale joint military exercise between South Korea and the United States, combining computer-simulated command post training with field exercises to test the allies' combined defense readiness against North Korea. It's one of the two major recurring South Korea-U.S. joint drills, along with the spring Freedom Shield exercise. 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” the 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.

Update, Aug. 19: Added information about the updated Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise

BY LEE JIAN [lee.jian@joongang.co.kr]