{"id":864720,"date":"2026-08-20T07:26:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-20T07:26:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/864720\/"},"modified":"2026-08-20T07:26:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-20T07:26:09","slug":"alarm-in-south-korea-as-iran-dispute-with-trump-shakes-a-72-year-alliance-us-israel-war-on-iran-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/864720\/","title":{"rendered":"Alarm in South Korea as Iran dispute with Trump shakes a 72-year alliance | US-Israel war on Iran News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seoul, South Korea \u2013 The order arrived not through diplomatic channels but via a post on social media<\/a>, just hours before the annual joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States were set to begin.<\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump, writing on his Truth Social platform, said on Monday that he was directing the Pentagon to \u201csubstantially reduce\u201d the drills, which he described<\/a> as sending an \u201cinappropriate and hostile\u201d signal to North Korea.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

He added, pointedly, that Seoul had declined to join the US and Israel\u2019s war on Iran.<\/p>\n

The announcement caught South Korean officials off guard, landing on a public holiday marking the country\u2019s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, and set off a scramble<\/a> in Seoul and Washington, DC.<\/p>\n

The Pentagon said only that it was \u201cactively working on executing\u201d the president\u2019s directive, while in Seoul, General Xavier Brunson, commander of US Forces Korea, met with Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back at the Ministry of Defence. By Wednesday, the two militaries had settled on specifics: The exercise, which was already under way, would be cut from 11 days to five, with the scope of several field training drills scaled back as well.<\/p>\n

The developments have sparked anxiety and anger in Seoul, reigniting a debate over the reliability of a security guarantee that South Korea has depended on since the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended not in peace but in an armistice.<\/p>\n

They have also spurred calls for Seoul to reconsider its posture towards the US-Israel war on Iran.<\/p>\n

\u2018We can\u2019t trust\u2019 Trump<\/p>\n

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has tried to project calm. Addressing his Cabinet on Tuesday, Lee said the US-South Korea alliance remained essential, but he also called for \u201cstrengthening\u201d the country\u2019s \u201cself-reliant defence capabilities\u201d.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, he struck a conciliatory tone towards Trump, calling the US president\u2019s decision \u201cdeeply infused with deliberations\u201d to end hostility on the Korean Peninsula. In a post on X, he said he \u201cfully empathises\u201d with Trump\u2019s view that Seoul must shoulder its own security and signalled a willingness to help restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz \u2013 the energy route that Iran has blockaded \u2013 saying his government will continue talks on possible \u201cpractical contribution measures\u201d.<\/p>\n

In Parliament, Minister of Foreign Affairs Cho Hyun told anxious lawmakers that there had been no advance notice of the move. \u201cNeither our government nor US officials knew what President Trump wrote on his Truth Social,\u201d Cho said. \u201cWe were not notified in advance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lawmakers on the National Assembly\u2019s defence committee were due to issue a formal response on Thursday, though aides told Al Jazeera the atmosphere around the issue was \u201ctoo sensitive at the moment\u201d to discuss.<\/p>\n

On social media, reactions ranged from frustration to open anger.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t trust everything Trump says,\u201d South Korean user Kim Won-tak wrote on Instagram.<\/p>\n

Another user, Choi Min, said: \u201cThe US prioritizes practical benefits over loyalty to allies. They do it to Europe as well. We can\u2019t get rid of our dependence on the US right away, but we should work towards self-reliance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Choi Joon-ho was blunter. Trump, he wrote, \u201cputs his allies in a bind with tariffs, starts wars himself, and then, when they drag on, demands that they get involved\u2026 He really seems unhinged.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Hankook Ilbo, one of South Korea\u2019s most widely read dailies, called on the country\u2019s public to confront the \u201cstark reality of a faltering Korea-US alliance\u201d. It added that it was \u201cabsurd that the US appears to treat North Korea more respectfully than its ally South Korea\u201d.<\/p>\n

War on Iran<\/p>\n

Others called for\u00a0a rethink of Seoul\u2019s policy on the war on Iran.<\/p>\n

The US president has openly criticised Seoul over the issue.<\/p>\n

\u201cWait a minute,\u201d he said at the Oval Office on Monday. \u201cWe have 39,000 soldiers over there, guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbour, and you\u2019re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? That\u2019s strange.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opinion on the war is mixed in South Korea. Polling in late March by Hankook Research showed some 38 percent of respondents saying the government should \u201csupport the US\u201d, while 36 percent said it should remain neutral. Some 16 percent said that \u201cwe should oppose the US\u201d.<\/p>\n

The opposition People Power Party leader Jang Dong-hyeok criticised Lee for turning down Trump\u2019s request for help with Iran, accusing him in a Facebook post of causing a \u201cdiplomatic disaster\u201d and \u201cdismantling the South Korea-US alliance\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jang warned that the alliance could \u201cunravel\u201d and Trump \u201ccould even push for a full withdrawal\u201d of US troops from South Korea.<\/p>\n

In an editorial on Tuesday, the JoongAng Ilbo, a conservative paper, also argued that Lee\u2019s administration bore some of the responsibility, writing that an alliance \u201cis not a one-sided favour but a reciprocal relationship\u201d. It urged the government to demonstrate its contributions, \u201cfrom investment and trade commitments to support for navigation through the Strait of Hormuz\u201d.<\/p>\n

Other editorials were more critical of Trump.<\/p>\n

The Korea Herald argued that an alliance \u201ccan survive disagreement\u201d but is harder to sustain \u201cwhen one side learns about a major security decision from social media\u201d. Its editorial board suggested that the gesture towards Pyongyang, arriving as US midterm elections in November approach, might have as much to do with shifting attention from \u201cthe protracted Iran war\u201d as with security in the Korean Peninsula.<\/p>\n

The paper urged Seoul to respond \u201cwithout either panic or complacency\u201d and reduce its \u201cvulnerabilities created by over-dependence on decisions made in Washington\u201d.<\/p>\n

Denuclearisation<\/p>\n

For those who watched Trump\u2019s first term closely, little of this feels new.<\/p>\n

After his 2018 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un<\/a> in Singapore, Washington and Seoul suspended that year\u2019s major joint exercise and scaled back several others, moves that were later partly reversed after the Washington-Pyongyang talks collapsed over denuclearisation and sanctions relief.<\/p>\n

Cha Du Hyeogn, vice president of the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, said the predictability Seoul has long assumed from Washington can no longer be taken for granted.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf South Korea is not willing to play the role that the United States expects of an ally, Washington can also reconsider elements of its security commitment,\u201d Cha said. He added that unresolved trade negotiations \u2013 including a South Korean pledge to invest $350bn in the US in return for tariff relief \u2013 may also be weighing on the relationship.<\/p>\n

Cha went on to flag the challenge ahead for Trump on North Korea.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the US were seriously pursuing negotiations with North Korea, denuclearisation would still have to be on the table,\u201d he said. \u201cGiven that Trump went to war with Iran over its nuclear ambitions, it would be difficult for the US to pursue talks with North Korea without addressing its nuclear programme.\u201d<\/p>\n

The episode has also revived a longstanding debate<\/a> over whether South Korea should pursue its own nuclear weapons.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrump unilaterally deciding to scale back the joint military exercises without consulting the South Korean government can be perceived by South Koreans as a weakening of the US commitment to their security,\u201d said Kim Jae Chun, professor of international relations at Sogang University. \u201cIf that confidence deteriorates further, it could strengthen the argument in South Korea for self-nuclearisation.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he cautioned against \u201coverreacting\u201d.<\/p>\n

Describing South Korea as a \u201cjunior partner\u201d in the alliance, he said the country \u201cmay have to compromise some degree of autonomy in exchange for securing a more reliable US security commitment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Many in Seoul, he added, still hope that a thaw between Trump and North Korea\u2019s Kim could prove to be \u201ca first step toward a more stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula\u201d.<\/p>\n

Zaheena Rasheed reported and wrote from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seoul, South Korea \u2013 The order arrived not through diplomatic channels but via a post on social media,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864721,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6109,43,5897,1259,44,18262,41,39,42,40,772,1690,206083],"class_list":["post-864720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-asia-pacific","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-south-korea","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-united-states","tag-us-canada","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864720"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864720\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864721"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}