{"id":122032,"date":"2026-08-17T11:25:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:25:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/122032\/"},"modified":"2026-08-17T11:25:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T11:25:10","slug":"south-korea-on-edge-over-trumps-call-to-cut-military-drills-goodwill-for-kim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/122032\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korea on edge over Trump\u2019s call to cut military drills, goodwill for Kim"},"content":{"rendered":"

US President Donald Trump\u2019s call to \u201csubstantially\u201d reduce US<\/a>–South Korea<\/a> military drills has revived speculation that he is trying to persuade North Korea<\/a>\u2019s leader Kim Jong-un<\/a> to attend another summit between them even though Kim has expressed no such interest.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s comments in a social media post on Sunday came as South Korea and the US began their annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise on Monday, putting Seoul in an awkward position of defending the alliance while not undercutting his latest overture to Kim, according to analysts.<\/p>\n

\u201cBased 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,\u201d he wrote on Truth Social, calling the drills \u201ccostly\u201d and a \u201ctotally inappropriate and hostile\u201d signal to North Korea.<\/p>\n

Analysts say Trump appears to desire talks with Kim again and give him a foreign policy win. But they see little prospect of a breakthrough given North Korea\u2019s growing alignment with Russia and China, its nuclear ambitions and its distrust of Washington after the failed Hanoi summit in February 2019.<\/p>\n

In the same post, Trump said he had also asked South Korean President Lee Jae Myung whether Seoul would like to join the effort to denuclearise Iran, and was told: \u201cNo thanks.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday, Trump posted a photo on social media of him meeting Kim at the inter-Korean border village of Panmunjom in June 2019, repeating his claim that he and Kim \u201cget along great\u201d.<\/p>\n

In June, Trump also posted photos from his first meeting with Kim in Singapore in June 2018, their second summit in Hanoi and their Panmunjom meeting, fuelling speculation about his desire to rekindle ties with the North Korean leader.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump\u2019s call to \u201csubstantially\u201d reduce US–South Korea military drills has revived speculation that he is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122033,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[134,74,15230,114,141,171,5280,325,34,53648,129,137,303,33,130,444],"class_list":["post-122032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","tag-hanoi","tag-iran","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korean","tag-korean-peninsula","tag-middle-east","tag-north-korea","tag-panmunjom","tag-pyongyang","tag-russia","tag-singapore","tag-south-korea","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122033"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}