{"id":124060,"date":"2026-08-19T01:48:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T01:48:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/124060\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T01:48:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T01:48:10","slug":"us-south-korea-slash-joint-military-drills-by-half-as-trump-eyes-kim-summit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/124060\/","title":{"rendered":"US, South Korea slash joint military drills by half as Trump eyes Kim summit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Scheduled joint US<\/a> and South Korean<\/a> military drills are expected to be cut by about half, according to South Korean media on Wednesday, following \u200cPresident Donald Trump<\/a>\u2019s order to substantially reduce US participation in the annual exercises.<\/p>\n

The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which began on Monday, had been due to run into next week.<\/p>\n

The allies were set to complete the first, defensive phase of the exercise this week and cancel or defer a second phase involving counter-attack operations, reports by broadcasters KBS, MBC, as well as newspapers Kyunghyang and DongA, said.<\/p>\n

Some planned field training was also expected to be postponed or cancelled, the reports said.<\/p>\n

US Forces Korea<\/a> declined to comment and referred questions to the Pentagon. The Pentagon<\/a> did not \u200cimmediately respond to a request for comment, while South Korea\u2019s Defence Ministry also had no immediate comment.\"USUS Forces Korea commander General Xavier Brunson leaves the Defence Ministry in Seoul after discussing cutbacks to the Ulchi exercise on Tuesday. Photo: Yonhap\/APThe reported reduction follows Trump\u2019s order on Sunday to \u201csubstantially reduce\u201d US participation in the annual exercise, \u200cciting his \u201cvery good relationship\u201d with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un<\/a>.Drills denounced<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scheduled joint US and South Korean military drills are expected to be cut by about half, according to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124061,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[519,62759,134,74,141,171,5280,64219,146,34,9582,129,112,33,57101],"class_list":["post-124060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-korea","tag-asia","tag-asia-pacific-economic-cooperation","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korean","tag-korean-peninsula","tag-kyunghyang","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-north-korea","tag-pentagon","tag-pyongyang","tag-seoul","tag-south-korea","tag-ulchi-freedom-shield"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124060","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=124060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124060\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124061"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}