South Korea and the United States will end on Friday, six days earlier than planned, the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, their main summer military maneuvers, according to an announcement this Wednesday by the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff. The decision was made at Washington’s proposal, after the U.S. president, Donald Trump, ordered the Pentagon, hours before the exercises began, to substantially reduce U.S. participation. The South Korean government believes that the Republican is using one of the military pillars of the alliance to pressure it over its reluctance to get involved in the war against Iran and other pending economic issues.
“I think President Trump’s message includes pressure on several pending issues,” South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said this Wednesday before a parliamentary committee. The minister believes the order pursues three objectives: to force Seoul to address Washington’s demands, to send a signal to Pyongyang, and to help the United States break the deadlock in the Iranian conflict, Reuters reports.
Trump had already mixed the Iranian and North Korean fronts in the Truth Social message in which he ordered the Pentagon to “substantially” reduce its participation in the maneuvers with its Asian ally. After praising his “very good relationship” with North Korea’s supreme leader, Kim Jong-un, he reproached Seoul for rejecting the request to join the “denuclearization” of Iran. The president returned to this issue on Monday in the Oval Office: he recalled that the United States protects South Korea against its northern neighbor and asked why his ally did not want to help him in what he called a “very simple military operation.”
Trump claimed there are 39,000 U.S. troops deployed in South Korea, although the official figure is around 28,500. He also did not specify what kind of participation he had requested from his South Korean counterpart, Lee Jae-myung. The South Korean presidency maintains, however, that it has participated in international efforts to reach a ceasefire and restore free navigation in the Strait of Hormuz and states that it is negotiating with Washington possible practical and military contributions.
Adding to this friction is South Korea’s commitment to invest $350 billion in the United States as part of the trade agreement signed last year. Of that total, $150 billion will be allocated to cooperation in the naval industry, but both governments continue negotiating how to execute the remaining $200 billion, according to Yonhap agency. Cho has defended the delay due to the need to study the commercial viability of the investments, comply with legal procedures, and resolve unforeseen issues he has not specified. South Korean Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol has denied that his country is deliberately delaying the process.
The South Korean foreign minister assured Parliament this morning that neither government knew in advance about the presidential decision to cut the military maneuvers. Cho specified, however, that military commanders later negotiated how to apply Trump’s order, thus avoiding presenting it as a unilateral imposition.
In the Republican’s message, published around six in the morning on Monday in South Korea (Sunday afternoon in the United States), the U.S. president acknowledged it was too late to cancel the maneuvers but said he had asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to reduce their scope. He justified the decision due to the cost of the exercises and his good rapport with Kim.
The military tests, which began on August 17 and were to last until the 27th, will finally conclude on the 21st. It is the first time that joint maneuvers of this magnitude have been shortened at the U.S. request once started, Yonhap reports. The allies will only complete the defensive phase, in which they will rehearse how to respond to a North Korean attack, but will leave unperformed the part focused on a counteroffensive. Seoul and Washington are still negotiating what to do with the 14 joint exercises planned on the ground, but the Pentagon maintains that these changes will not affect their training objectives.
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Pyongyang systematically condemns these maneuvers, which have been held under different names and formats since 1976. The North Korean regime considers them rehearsals for an invasion, while the United States and South Korea insist on their defensive nature. In a commentary released this Wednesday by the North Korean state agency KCNA, North Korea calls both countries “warmongers” and assures it will continue exercising its right to “self-defense” as long as the military threat persists.
The decision to cut the exercises shows the growing urgency with which Trump is trying to resume direct dialogue with Kim, while the North Korean supreme leader reserves the initiative and the regime avoids giving clues about whether it would accept a new summit. The last one, held in Hanoi in February 2019, ended abruptly and without agreement.
The Wall Street Journal reported this Wednesday that the U.S. president is pressuring his advisers to organize a meeting in the fall. Trump has privately raised the possibility of meeting Kim during a trip he might make to Asia in November, coinciding with the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit to be held in Shenzhen, China. There are no formal preparations at the moment.
Trump said on Monday that Kim had responded “very positively” to his outreach attempts but did not explain when the contact took place, through what channel, or what message he received. Pyongyang remains silent about the alleged exchange.
The announcement of the reduction of the maneuvers coincides with the arrival in Seoul of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, on his first bilateral visit to South Korea in five years. Wang meets this Wednesday with his counterpart Cho and will be received on Thursday by South Korean President Lee Jae-myung and his National Security Advisor, Wi Aung-lac. The situation on the peninsula will be among the main topics of the talks. China, North Korea’s main economic partner and traditional ally, retains great influence over any attempt to reactivate regional dialogue. The tightening of the military alliance with Russia, to which Pyongyang has sent troops and weapons for the war in Ukraine, has also expanded Kim’s room for maneuver.
Trump and Kim met three times between 2018 and 2019. Seven years later, the starting point for a hypothetical meeting with Trump is even more distant: Kim maintains that North Korea’s status as a nuclear-armed country is “irreversible” and that there will only be dialogue if the United States abandons its “obsession” with denuclearization.
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