SEOUL, Aug 19 (Reuters) – South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald Trump’s order \u200cto curb joint military drills appeared aimed in part \u200cat pressuring Seoul to support U.S. efforts in the Iran war, alongside other \u200bunresolved issues such as investment.<\/p>\n
“I think President Trump’s message includes pressure over several pending issues concerning the South Korean government, as well as a message to North Korea and an intention by the \u200cUnited States to \u2060break a stalemate in the Iran war,” Cho said.<\/p>\n
One potential source of friction could be South Korea’s \u2060pledge to invest $350 billion in the United States under a trade deal signed last year, Cho said.<\/p>\n
Seoul has yet to announce details \u200bof the \u200binvestment plan, although Cho said \u200bWashington had sent Seoul a \u200cproposal outlining projects that could be considered.<\/p>\n
“We could not move faster on the investment plan as we had to consider factors such as commercial viability and take legal procedures,” Cho said. He cited other unexpected problems, without elaborating.<\/p>\n
South Korea and the United \u200cStates announced on Wednesday that they \u200bwill shorten annual military drills to five \u200bdays from 11 and \u200bscale back some field training, following Trump’s order \u200con a substantial reduction in U.S. \u200bparticipation.<\/p>\n
South Korea’s Unification \u200bMinister Chung Dong-young, who attended the same hearing, said he believes Trump was moving closer to potentially arranging a \u200bnew meeting with \u200cNorth Korean leader Kim Jong Un by curtailing exercises that \u200bhave long angered Pyongyang.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kyu-seok Shim and Heejin \u200bKim Editing by Ed Davies)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL, Aug 19 (Reuters) – South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said on Wednesday that U.S. President Donald…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":128424,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[10614,74,65653,89,56846,34,25259,112,1484],"class_list":["post-128423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seoul","tag-cho-hyun","tag-donald-trump","tag-investment-plan","tag-iran-war","tag-military-drills","tag-north-korea","tag-north-korean-leader-kim-jong-un","tag-seoul","tag-south-korean"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128423","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=128423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/128424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}