US President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to substantially reduce joint military exercises with South Korea, hours before the annual drills were due to start on August 17.
Writing on his Truth Social platform, Trump said he had instructed US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to cut back the exercises because it was too late to cancel them. He cited his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, the cost to Washington and Seoul’s refusal to join the American campaign against Iran.
The drills, known as Ulchi Freedom Shield, “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, Trump wrote. He described the country as unthreatening and respectful throughout his time in office.
South Korean military assessments put the number of North Korean ballistic missile launches this year at 11, including tests on August 6 and August 12 from the Wonsan area on the east coast. The second missile flew more than 700km before falling into the sea, Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said.
Pyongyang has also become a direct participant in the war in Ukraine, a conflict Brussels Signal has reported it entered in late 2024. Ukrainian and South Korean estimates put the number of North Korean soldiers sent to Russia’s Kursk region at 14,000 to 15,000, of whom around 9,500 remain.
Ukrainian military intelligence said this month that a North Korean missile unit was deploying to Russia’s Voronezh region and could be equipped with up to 120 ballistic missiles. It said 40 such missiles had already been delivered to Moscow.
The EU has sanctioned figures involved in the transfers and, at a summit in Brussels in June, joined South Korean President Lee Jae Myung in condemning what both sides described as illegal military cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow. The statement said third-party support was enabling Russia to sustain its war.
Seoul did not follow Washington’s lead on the drills. South Korea’s defence ministry said the 11-day exercise, scheduled to run until August 27, was proceeding as planned, with about 18,000 South Korean troops taking part.
Trump’s post came a day after he published a photograph of himself standing beside Kim, taken at their 2019 meeting, and said the two got along well. The US has been at war with Iran since February 28, a campaign that has closed the Strait of Hormuz to much European shipping.
The announcement also followed Lee’s offer on August 15 to open talks on replacing the 1953 armistice with a permanent peace settlement. Pyongyang has not responded, and South Korean forces fired warning shots last week after North Korean soldiers briefly crossed the Military Demarcation Line.
