South Korea’s annual joint military drills with the US will be cut short by six days at the request of Washington, its defence ministry has announced.
Seoul said that the “period and scale” of the 2026 Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise had been adjusted due to a “proposal of the US side”.
The drill will now conclude on 21 August, rather than 27 August as planned. It comes after Donald Trump announced plans to curtail exercises with South Korea, citing his “very good” relationship with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un.
South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told a parliamentary hearing that neither South Korean nor US officials had been aware in advance about Trump’s plans.
The combined field training exercise component of the drills will also be “partially reduced in scale”, Seoul said, noting that the “specific details” of that reduction are still under discussion.
The unprecedented curtailing shakes South Korea’s confidence in America’s commitment to come to its aid, under a defence pact that is the foundation of their relationship.
It also sends a signal to other US allies in the region like Japan and Taiwan.
The announcement comes after US officials told the Wall Street Journal that Trump is pushing his aides for a meeting with Kim Jong Un.
Over the weekend, Trump wrote on Truth Social: “These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile.”
He added: “While somewhat unrelated (?), I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, ‘No thanks!'”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, the president again explicitly linked his decision to South Korea’s refusal to “give us a little hand” with Iran.
“We have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next door neighbour, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran,” he said. “That’s strange”.
