Donald Trump wants to cut back military exercises with South Korea, citing good ties with Kim Jong Un

President Donald Trump said Sunday he directed Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises with South Korea, citing his “very good relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.”

“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, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

North Korea on Friday called the upcoming US military drills with South Korea a war rehearsal and threatened to take action against the countries, using rhetoric similar to what Pyongyang has said in the past to criticise the joint exercises.

Trump said he opted to cut back future exercises because it was too late to cancel ones scheduled to start Monday, which the U.S. and South Korea have said will be similar in scale to those in recent years.

In his Truth Social post, Trump also criticized South Korea for not helping the U.S. with its effort to denuclearize Iran. The South Korean Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After trading insults with North Korea’s Kim in his first term, Trump sought to forge a bond with him during a number of summits and crossed briefly into North Korea during one visit in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea.

Trump offered to extend his trip to Asia in fall 2025 to meet with Kim again in his second term, but the two have not reconvened.

Nuclear-armed North Korea is an authoritarian state that most modern US presidents have sought to isolate.

For decades, the U.S. has wielded heavy sanctions against North Korea’s economy to pressure it to halt its nuclear weapons program. But Pyongyang has so far given no indication of a willingness to give ground.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said Trump told him on the sidelines of the G-7 summit in France earlier this year that it was “time to pay attention” to North Korea, Reuters reported.

Lee said Trump wanted to resume a dialogue with Kim, but he was frustrated over how to proceed.

On Saturday, Trump shared a photo of himself with Kim, where the North Korean leader was giving a stern look to a photographer as Trump appeared to give him an angry look.

“Despite the unfriendly look on this picture, there are many where we’re smiling, Kim Jong Un and I get along GREAT!,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s announcement comes as the Iran war enters its sixth month, prompting some U.S. officials to warn of a Pentagon funding crunch and extreme munition shortages. In his post, he mentioned a prior request of South Korea for help on Iran.

“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!,” he wrote.