U.S., South Korea cut short their joint military drills at Trump’s direction

The South Korean and U.S. militaries have agreed to shorten their drills at the U.S.’s request, officials for both nations acknowledged Wednesday, days after President Trump ordered cuts to the exercises.

The allies’ summertime Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises began Monday morning for an 11-day run, just after Mr. Trump ordered they be scaled back. Mr. Trump cited what he said was a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea’s refusal to join the U.S. war against Iran.

A Defense Department official told CBS News in a statement Tuesday evening that, at the direction of Mr. Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the joint drills had been “substantially reduced” and would end Friday, one week earlier than had been originally scheduled.

“Associated live-training events have been reduced, with certain events canceled or converted to simulations,” the official said. “These adjustments preserve essential readiness and training objectives. There will be no degradation to U.S. training objectives.”

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed in a separate statement the reduced timeline came at the request of the U.S. It said the allies also agreed to downsize some joint field training exercises.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff added that, going forward, the two nations would “discuss and implement various measures aimed at achieving the objectives of the UFS exercise and establishing a combined defense posture.” 

Many experts say Mr. Trump’s move threatens to hurt combined U.S.-South Korean readiness and eventually weaken their decades-long alliance.

Ulchi Freedom Shield is largely a computer-simulated command post exercise meant to hone the allies’ ability to deal with potential regional security threats like North Korean aggression. The two countries usually hold field training exercises during the command post exercise period.

The drills and a similar springtime exercise are a central pillar of the U.S.-South Korea alliance, which dates to the 1950-53 Korean War. But they’re also a long-running source of tensions with North Korea, which has denounced the exercises as a rehearsal for war and responded with provocative missile tests.

North Korea hasn’t responded to Mr. Trump’s overture. But earlier Wednesday, its state news agency, KCNA, published commentary slamming the U.S.-South Korean military drills as “frantic” and “extremely dangerous” and vowing to completely frustrate its rivals’ hostilities.

Experts said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, now emboldened by his advancing nuclear program and expanding military cooperation, won’t likely embrace Mr. Trump’s overture anytime soon unless he’s promised bigger concessions. In response to Mr. Trump’s previous outreach, Kim suggested last year that he can return to talks only after the U.S. drops its demand of a North Korean denuclearization as a precondition for diplomacy.

Mr. Trump and Kim met three times from 2018-2019 but their high-stakes diplomacy eventually fell apart over wrangling over a North Korean demand for extensive sanctions relief in return for limited denuclearization steps.