President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has directed the Defense Department to scale down joint military exercises with South Korea, citing the country\u2019s refusal to join the war in Iran and his \u201cvery good\u201d relationship with North Korea\u2019s Kim Jong Un.<\/p>\n
Trump said the large, annual military drills sent a \u201csignal that is totally inappropriate and hostile\u201d to North Korea, a country with which the U.S. has no formal diplomatic ties but which Trump says has been \u201cunthreatening and respectful\u201d as long as he has been president.<\/p>\n
\u201cBased on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
Trump also mentioned South Korea\u2019s refusal to join the Iran war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhile 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, \u2018No thanks!\u2019\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
It was not immediately clear what a scaled-down version of the training, set to start Monday only hours after Trump\u2019s announcement, would look like. <\/p>\n
South Korea\u2019s embassy in Washington and U.S. Forces Korea, a sub-unified command tasked with carrying out the exercises, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. <\/p>\n
The command was set to carry out the Ulchi Freedom Shield training Monday, which would include 18,000 South Korean soldiers, the South Korean military told The Associated Press<\/a>. The exercises are meant to build understanding<\/a> among several agencies to ensure \u201ctheir ability to fortify the combined defense posture and enhance Alliance response capabilities against a spectrum of security threats.\u201d North Korea last week called<\/a> the drills a \u201cwar rehearsal\u201d and threatened to retaliate.<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s announcement comes days after North Korea launched a ballistic missile<\/a> toward the sea, conducting weapons testing in possible protest of the upcoming U.S.-South Korea military drills.<\/p>\n It also comes a day after the U.S. pulled its last aircraft carrier<\/a> in Asia, as the USS George Washington was sent to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln \u2014\u00a0which has drawn scrutiny over conditions<\/a> on board \u2014 in the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has directed the Defense Department to scale down joint military exercises…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":816067,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-816066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=816066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/816066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/816067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=816066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=816066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=816066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}