By The Straits Times | Created at 2026-08-17 12:31:48 | Updated at 2026-08-17 13:14:07
44 minutes ago
SEOUL - Hours before allies South Korea and the United States kicked off a major combined military exercise on Aug 17, President Donald Trump fired his own salvo, announcing on Truth Social that he was “substantially” reducing the drills.
The move appears to be part of Trump’s latest push to re-engage Pyongyang, after he repeatedly expressed an interest in reviving diplomacy with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during his second term. But analysts are skeptical that Kim would reciprocate given his current cozy relationship with Moscow.
Trump said in his post on Aug 16 that the exercises were “not only costly”, but also a “totally inappropriate and hostile” signal to an “unthreatening and respectful” North Korea, adding that he had instructed US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to reduce them significantly as it was “too late to cancel”.
Also citing his “very good relationship” with Kim, Trump said he was unhappy that the US had “long ago” agreed to participate in joint military exercises with South Korea.
Just a day earlier, Trump had posted a photograph of himself with Kim taken during their last meeting at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in 2019. Acknowledging their “unfriendly look” in the image, Trump wrote: “Kim Jong Un and I get along GREAT!”
In June, Trump had also posted without caption a photo of him walking beside a smiling Kim during their June 2018 Singapore Summit.
It is not the first time Trump has sought to scale back US-South Korea joint military exercises, with a view that such a move would support diplomacy with Pyongyang.
During his first term, Trump had suddenly suspended the biannual exercises following his 2018 meeting with Kim.
He said then that there was “no reason at this time” to spend “large amounts of money” on joint US-South Korea “war games” while his relationship with Kim remained positive.
Pyongyang has routinely denounced the South Korea-US joint exercises, which are intended to strengthen the allies’ ability to jointly plan and execute the defence of South Korea, as “rehearsals” for an invasion and acts of “hostility and provocation”.
On Aug 14, North Korea warned that it could respond to the latest drills with “a new level of a deterrent”, amid accusations that Washington, Seoul and Tokyo were forming a “nuclear alliance”.
The warning came after North Korea fired short-range ballistic missiles on Aug 6 and again on Aug 12.
Even if Trump’s latest social media posts signal an opening for re-engagement with Kim, analysts expressed doubt that Pyongyang would play ball.
“Pyongyang has shown no interest in talks with Washington or Seoul, much less in denuclearisation,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University.
He pointed out that North Korea is “busy profiting” from Russia’s war against Ukraine and that the Trump administration’s ongoing difficulties over the Iran conflict would do little to enhance its credibility in the eyes of the Kim regime.
South Korea’s Yonhap News quoted Emma Chanlett-Avery, director of political security affairs at the New York-based Asia Society Policy Institute, as saying that Kim now has “little appetite for negotiations with Trump” after gaining an additional patron in Russia for supporting the war in Ukraine.
North Korean state media reported on Aug 16 that Kim had told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he was “proud” of their countries’ strong ties and expected an “excellent future” between Pyongyang and Moscow.
Kim was responding to Putin’s congratulatory message to mark Korea’s liberation on Aug 15, 1945 from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule.
Chanlett-Avery called Trump’s description of Pyongyang as “unthreatening and respectful” alarming to US allies who have watched the hermit regime steadily improve its missile and nuclear capabilities over the years.
In response to Trump’s order to scale back the two countries’ joint military exercises, South Korea’s presidential office expressed hope that the “friendly relations between the North Korean and US leaders” could lead to meaningful talks aimed at advancing peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.
Responding to local media queries, the South Korean defence ministry said on Aug 17 that the current exercise, scheduled to run till Aug 27, remains unaffected and will “proceed as previously notified and scheduled”.
In his first summit with Trump in August 2025, South Korean president Lee Jae Myung had offered to play the role of “pacemaker” to Trump’s “peacemaking” efforts, a position he most recently reiterated during a speech on Aug 15.
Speaking at an event to mark Korea’s liberation from 35 years of Japanese rule in 1945, President Lee had called for talks among “directly involved parties” to formally end the Korean War and transform the Korean Peninsula’s unstable armistice into a peace regime. He said such talks could also explore practical measures to halt the advancement of North Korea’s nuclear capabilities.
The two Koreas remain technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
Lee was also singled out in Trump’s post, in which the US president claimed, without providing details, that Washington had asked Seoul whether it wanted to join in its efforts to denuclearise Iran, but received a “no thanks” in response.
South Korea has repeatedly come under criticism from Trump over what he has described as Seoul’s failure to support his efforts against Iran.
Seoul’s Blue House has not publicly responded to Trump’s claim about its rejection to participate in the Iran denuclearisation efforts. However, analyst Lee Seong-hyon noted that whatever had passed between the two leaders was likely registered by Washington as a “refusal rather than the opening of a negotiation”.
Trump’s latest broadside against South Korea also comes as Seoul faces mounting pressure from Washington over a series of unresolved trade issues. These include a new 12.5 per cent tariff on South Korean goods linked to US concerns over forced labour, pressure to accelerate investment commitments made under 2025’s tariff deal and a separate US investigation into South Korea’s alleged structural excess capacity.
The US-South Korea security alliance was simply another addition to “the menu of available pressure points” Washington could use against Seoul, said Lee, a senior fellow at the Washington-based George H.W. Bush Foundation for US-China Relations.
He said Seoul was bearing the brunt of Trump’s pressure because it had “approached a highly personalised presidency with conventional institutional logic” and had been unable to break out of that approach.
Lee added that Trump’s actions signalled that “leader-to-leader rapport now outranks the operational readiness of alliances”, with North Korea’s Kim emerging as the principal beneficiary.
“Kim has somehow extracted a reduction in the US-South Korea joint military exercises without (offering) a reciprocal step of any kind,” Lee said.
