{"id":193769,"date":"2026-08-19T01:38:13","date_gmt":"2026-08-19T01:38:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/193769\/"},"modified":"2026-08-19T01:38:13","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T01:38:13","slug":"south-korean-and-us-militaries-shorten-drills-after-trump-ordered-a-reduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/193769\/","title":{"rendered":"South Korean and US militaries shorten drills after Trump ordered a reduction"},"content":{"rendered":"

SEOUL \u2013 The South Korean and U.S. militaries have agreed to shorten their drills at the U.S.’s request, South Korean officials said Wednesday, days after President Donald Trump ordered cuts<\/a> to the exercises.<\/p>\n

The allies\u2019 summertime Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises<\/a> began Monday morning for an 11-day run, just after Trump ordered his Pentagon chief to \u201csubstantially reduce\u201d them. Trump cited what he said was a good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and South Korea\u2019s refusal to join the U.S. war against Iran.<\/a><\/p>\n

South Korea\u2019s military said in a statement the ongoing drills with the U.S. would end Friday, not Aug. 27 as initially planned. It said the allies also agreed to downsize some joint field training exercises.<\/p>\n

Many experts say Trump\u2019s move<\/a> threatens to hurt combined U.S.-South Korean readiness and eventually weaken their decades-long alliance.<\/a><\/p>\n

Ulchi Freedom Shield is largely a computer-simulated command post exercise meant to hone the allies\u2019 ability to deal with potential regional security threats like North Korean aggression. The two countries usually hold field training exercises during the command post exercise period.<\/p>\n

The drills and a similar springtime exercise<\/a> are a central pillar of the U.S. -South Korea alliance, which dates to the 1950-53 Korean War. But it\u2019s also a long-running source of tensions with North Korea, which has denounced the exercises as a rehearsal for war and responded with provocative missile tests.<\/p>\n

North Korea hasn’t responded to Trump’s overture. But earlier Wednesday, its state news agency, KCNA, published commentary slamming the U.S.-South Korean military drills as \u201cfrantic\u201d and \u201cextremely dangerous\u201d and vowing to completely frustrate its rivals\u2019 hostilities.<\/p>\n

Experts said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, now emboldened by his advancing nuclear program and expanding military cooperation, won’t likely embrace Trump’s overture anytime soon unless he’s promised bigger concessions. In response to Trump’s previous outreach, Kim suggested last year that he can return to talks only after the U.S. drops its demand of a North Korean denuclearization as a precondition for diplomacy.<\/p>\n

Trump and Kim met three times from 2018-2019 but their high-stakes diplomacy eventually fell apart over wrangling over a North Korean demand for extensive sanctions relief in return for limited denuclearization steps.<\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SEOUL \u2013 The South Korean and U.S. militaries have agreed to shorten their drills at the U.S.’s request,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[12,11111,74,1194,52],"class_list":["post-193769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-donald-trump","tag-donald-trump","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-trump","tag-washington-news","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@people\/117119621780359657","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193769"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193769\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/people\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}