The prospect of a significant reduction in US-South Korea combined exercises has been raised after President Donald Trump ordered a major scale-back of the drills, which the two allies have held annually to maintain deterrence against North Korea.
The situation is drawing cautious comparisons to 2019, when key joint exercises were suspended or scrapped following Trump's June 2018 summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his surprise announcement halting the drills.
Trump said Sunday (local time) on his Truth Social platform that he had "instructed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to substantially reduce the joint exercises" with South Korea, citing the fact that it was "too late to cancel" them outright.
He added that he was unhappy that the United States had "long ago agreed to participate in joint military exercises with South Korea," given what he described as his "very good relationship" with Kim. He called the exercises "totally inappropriate and sending a very hostile signal."
Trump also claimed the exercises are costly and that the United States bears most of the expense.
The post appeared at 6 a.m. Monday Korean Standard Time — the opening day of the Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) combined exercise — raising questions about whether the timing was deliberate.
South Korean military authorities said the UFS exercise is proceeding normally. No specific request from the US side to adjust the scale of the exercise had been received, according to officials.
UFS is a theater-level combined exercise held annually by the two allies for the defense of the Korean Peninsula. South Korean and US military authorities had announced at a joint briefing that 14 battalion-level or above combined field maneuver training events would be conducted during the exercise period.
The number of field maneuver drills is somewhat smaller than last year. However, there were no indications during the planning process for this year's UFS that the US side sought to reduce the number of training events, officials said.
In military terminology, an "exercise" refers to theater-level operational planning and execution drills — including command post exercises such as UFS — while "training" refers to mission-proficiency activities at the tactical unit level. Trump used the word "exercise" in his order, though he may not have been drawing a conceptual distinction between the two terms.
While this marks the first time Trump has called for reducing combined exercises during his second term, he raised the issue multiple times during his first term (January 2017–January 2021), and the drills were in fact scaled back and eventually suspended.
After holding a North Korea-US summit in Singapore in June 2018, Trump abruptly announced that the United States would halt the joint exercises with South Korea, saying it would "save a tremendous amount of money" while negotiations continued.
The Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercise — a theater-level combined drill scheduled for August of that year — was suspended for the first time in 28 years. The following year, amid the atmosphere of inter-Korean and North Korea-US dialogue, the Key Resolve exercise and Foal Eagle training were also halted.
For the years that followed, the two sides conducted only computer simulation-based exercises under the name "combined command post exercise," held in the first and second halves of each year. Large-scale live-maneuver combined exercises were revived in 2022 under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration.
Currently, the theater-level Freedom Shield exercise is held in the first half of the year and UFS in the second half. Both exercises center on command post drills but also include large-scale field maneuver training tied to operational scenarios.
South Korean military authorities had announced plans to expand battalion-level or above combined field maneuver training from about 140 events last year to more than 160 this year. Whether that plan will proceed as scheduled now draws scrutiny in light of Trump's remarks.
Some analysts suggest Trump's comments reflect less a genuine intent to reduce the exercises and more a gesture aimed at resuming dialogue with Kim ahead of US midterm elections.
If the goal is to create conditions for renewed North Korea-US talks, the Lee Jae Myung government — which has pledged to serve as a "pacemaker" supporting US peace efforts on the Korean Peninsula — could go along with an actual reduction in the drills.
President Lee Jae Myung said at a foreign press conference in December last year that South Korea "should be able to take the position that, if necessary for creating conditions for North Korea-US dialogue, adjustments to the combined exercises are something we can fully consider."
Yoo Ji-hoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA), said Trump's remarks on scaling back the exercises appear intended to use the drills as a lever for creating a favorable negotiating environment with North Korea. "However, if combined exercises are repeatedly reduced, the proficiency of the combined defense posture and the consistency of deterrence signals toward North Korea could weaken," he said.
Meanwhile, any sudden suspension or reduction of combined exercises could raise concerns about weakening deterrence against North Korea.
The development may also affect the Lee Jae Myung government's push to transfer wartime operational control to South Korea.
The government is pursuing the transfer of operational control within President Lee's term as a national policy priority. Combined exercises are essential for evaluating and verifying whether South Korea meets the required conditions — including the military's ability to lead combined defense operations and to counter North Korea's nuclear and missile threats.
A joint US-South Korea assessment of the capabilities and systems required for the operational control transfer is also being conducted during this year's UFS.
The Defense Ministry aims to complete verification of the Future Combined Forces Command's full operational capability at the Security Consultative Meeting this fall, and to recommend to the commanders in chief of both nations a target year — known as "Year X" — for the transfer of operational control.
gil@heraldcorp.com
