Just hours before joint US-South Korean war games were due to begin, US President Donald Trump said he had instructed the Pentagon to dial back what he described as “inappropriate and hostile” exercises on the Korean peninsula.
Pointing to his “good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Mr Trump said he was unhappy about drills intended to prepare for a potential attack by Pyongyang.
South Korea’s defence ministry, however, said the annual exercise would go ahead “as previously notified and scheduled”, despite several rounds of warnings from North Korea last week.
“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,” Mr Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“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 added.
With the start time too close for a full cancellation, Mr Trump said he ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” the exercises.
The Ulchi Freedom Shield drills are scheduled to run until 27 August, with about 18,000 South Korean military personnel taking part.
Mr Trump has long pushed to end or scale back allied exercises with South Korea, and he has repeatedly clashed with Seoul over how to share the costs of keeping 28,500 US troops on the peninsula and their role in safeguarding the wider region.
North Korea, still technically at war with the South, regularly condemns the drills as rehearsals for invasion. Pyongyang last week fired a ballistic missile from its eastern coast towards the Sea of Japan, the South Korean and Japanese militaries said, just days after another North Korean short-range ballistic missile launch.
The ties between Mr Trump and Mr Kim have swung sharply over the years.
At one point, Mr Trump derided the North Korean leader as “little rocket man” and warned of “fire and fury,” while Mr Kim declared he would “tame the mentally deranged US dotard with fire.”
Later, they held three summits, and Mr Trump famously said, “we fell in love” after exchanging letters with Mr Kim. Those diplomatic efforts, however, did not produce changes in North Korea’s nuclear weapons programme or its ballistic missile development.
Even as Mr Trump struck a friendly tone toward Pyongyang in his Truth Social post, he also invoked South Korea’s position on the US-Israeli conflict with 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!’” Mr Trump wrote.
How, precisely, the drills could be scaled back was not immediately clear. In recent years, the exercises have already moved away from live-fire components, shifting instead toward computer-simulated missile and cyberattack scenarios.
Colonel Ryan Donald, a spokesman for the US and South Korean Combined Forces Command, had said the drills would include simulations of combat against North Korean forces he described as battle-hardened by deployment in the Russia-Ukraine war.
The US maintains about 28,500 troops in South Korea as a bulwark against threats from Pyongyang, a posture rooted in the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Mr Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly questioned long-standing alliances, including NATO, as he criticised Western partners for declining to support his war against Iran.
Colonel Donald had said this year’s exercise would place added emphasis on drone warfare, GPS disruption and the role of cyber attacks.
Experts say North Korea has expanded its nuclear and missile capabilities since Mr Trump’s negotiations with Mr Kim collapsed; the two last met in person in 2019.
Analysts also say North Korea has provided troops and munitions for Moscow’s war in Ukraine in exchange for financial support, food, energy and military technology.
Ukraine has recently said up to 50,000 North Korean troops are expected to deploy to Russia, though it has offered no evidence to support the claim and provided no timeframe.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, in making the assertion, urged South Korea to supply air defence systems to counter Russian missiles, a request that has not been answered by Seoul.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has shifted course from his predecessor since taking office in June 2025, offering talks with Pyongyang without preconditions and proposing a formal end to the Korean War.
North Korea’s leadership, however, has so far promised only to speed up its military build-up, with Mr Kim branding the South the “most hostile state”.
