U.S. allies call South Korea cooperation ‘critical’ after Trump orders exercise cut

Asian allies expressed thinly veiled concern Tuesday over U.S. President Donald Trump’s order to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea in an apparent bid to lure North Korean leader Kim Jong Un back to talks. 

A day after ordering drills to be truncated, Trump told reporters in Washington that Kim Jong Un had responded to his outreach.

The U.S. leader, who met Kim three times during his first term and became the first sitting American president to enter North Korea, told reporters at the White House on Monday that he was making the situation on the Korean Peninsula “much safer” by reducing the scale of the “war games.”