President Donald Trump announced Sunday that he has instructed Secretary of War Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea, framing the decision around what he described as his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. The announcement came in a post on Truth Social hours before the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises were set to begin.
“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,” Trump wrote. He added that “it is too late to cancel” the drills outright, but said he had “instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!”
In the post, Trump argued that the exercises carry a financial burden on the United States and send an unwarranted message to Pyongyang. “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 wrote.
The post was not Trump’s only recent public reference to the North Korean leader. A day earlier, on Saturday, Trump shared a photograph of himself with Kim on Truth Social and wrote that the two “get along GREAT,” a comment that came as North Korea was already publicly condemning the upcoming military exercises.
President Points to South Korea’s Refusal to Aid Iran Denuclearization Effort
Trump also used the post to raise an unrelated grievance involving South Korea’s response to a request tied to the Islamic Republic of Iran. “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!'” Trump wrote, before closing the post with, “Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
Neither the White House nor the Pentagon immediately responded to requests for further detail on the scope of the reductions or on South Korea’s reported refusal to join the Iran effort.
Order Comes Hours Before Ulchi Freedom Shield Begins
Trump’s directive landed just hours before the start of Ulchi Freedom Shield, the allies’ 11-day summertime exercise scheduled to run from August 17 through August 27. About 18,000 South Korean troops were set to participate alongside their American counterparts, drawn from the roughly 28,500-strong U.S. military presence in South Korea.
Officials had said in the lead-up to the drills that this year’s exercise would include operations designed to counter drones, disrupt GPS signals and defend against cyberattacks, adapting to North Korea’s evolving military capabilities. The U.S. Eighth Army had also outlined plans for a combined arms live-fire exercise to test joint precision targeting, a river wet-gap crossing and detainee-processing training conducted in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.
Ulchi Freedom Shield has been held annually under its current name since 2022, though the broader U.S.-South Korea summertime training exercises it evolved from date back decades. Washington and Seoul have consistently described the drills as defensive in nature, intended to strengthen readiness against North Korean threats rather than as a prelude to any offensive action.
North Korea Had Already Condemned the Drills as a “War Rehearsal”
Trump’s decision to scale back the exercises followed days of escalating rhetoric from Pyongyang. On Friday, a spokesperson for North Korea’s Foreign Ministry, in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, called the drills a rehearsal for an “aggressive war” and said this year’s version was intended to “complete preparations for the substantial military confrontation” with North Korea.
North Korea’s Foreign Ministry additionally criticized the expanding trilateral security cooperation among the United States, South Korea and Japan, describing it as a “nuclear alliance” that it said heightens the danger posed by the exercise. Pyongyang has separately warned it would respond to the drills “with a new level of a deterrent.”
North Korea routinely denounces the joint exercises as invasion preparation and has frequently responded to them with weapons tests in the past. Consistent with that pattern, North Korea fired a ballistic missile toward the Sea of Japan on Wednesday, less than a week after a similar short-range ballistic missile launch on August 6.
Background: North Korean Troops Have Gained Battlefield Experience Fighting Alongside Russia
U.S. military officials have said North Korean troops deployed to fight alongside Russian forces in the war in Ukraine have gained significant combat experience, including in the growing use of unmanned systems, electronic warfare and cyber operations. Analysts have said that experience factors into how allied planners are approaching this year’s Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise.
Ukraine has separately said that North Korean-made missiles were used in a Russian ballistic missile attack on a steel plant in Zaporizhzhia that killed seven workers and forced a halt in production, an attack that also involved Russia’s Zircon hypersonic missiles.
A Familiar Pattern: Trump Scaled Back Joint Drills During His First Term as Well
Sunday’s announcement echoes a similar move Trump made during his first term. In 2019, following a failed denuclearization summit with Kim Jong Un in Hanoi, the Pentagon and South Korea’s military confirmed they were ending the large-scale joint spring exercises known as Key Resolve and Foal Eagle, replacing them with smaller-scale training under a program called Dong Maeng. Trump said at the time that curbing the drills would save the United States hundreds of millions of dollars and could help ease tensions with Pyongyang.
Trump met with Kim Jong Un three times during his first term to discuss North Korea’s nuclear program, most recently in 2019. That history of direct engagement has continued to shape his public statements on North Korea, including his description of Kim on Sunday as having been “unthreatening and respectful” throughout his presidency.
What Happens Next Remains Unclear
As of Sunday evening, it remained unclear whether Trump’s directive would result in immediate changes to the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises already scheduled to begin Monday, or whether the reductions would instead apply to future joint military planning between the two allies. Any scaling back of the exercises would likely draw scrutiny from defense officials and from other U.S. allies in the region, particularly given North Korea’s continued advancement of its weapons programs and its expanding military cooperation with Russia.
For now, Trump’s Sunday post signals that his approach to North Korea remains shaped heavily by the personal diplomacy that defined one of the more unconventional relationships of his first term, even as the drills he is moving to curtail were designed, in part, to prepare U.S. and South Korean forces for exactly the kind of threat Pyongyang continues to pose.