President Donald Trump said Wednesday, August 19, that joint US-South Korea military exercises are an insult to North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un, hours after the Department of Defense confirmed the ongoing drills would be shortened by a week.
What Trump Said
"Now, I didn't like the fact that we're doing these massive military exercises really against North Korea," Trump told reporters, before turning his criticism toward Seoul over its handling of the Iran war. "I felt that to do a massive — we were doing a massive war exercise. I thought that was very insulting to somebody that, frankly, has been, during my term at least, very well-behaved."
The Exercises Are Being Cut Short
The joint drills, which had originally been scheduled to run through August 27, will now conclude on Friday — a week earlier than planned — according to the Pentagon. Trump did not explicitly link his comments to the decision to shorten the exercises, though the timing of his remarks drew immediate attention given his long-standing public opposition to the drills.
A Planned Meeting With Kim
Trump confirmed he intends to meet with Kim later this year, though he declined to say whether the two leaders have been exchanging letters. Trump met with Kim three times during his first term, including two formal summits, though those meetings ultimately failed to produce a lasting agreement on Trump's goal of North Korean denuclearization.
North Korea's Recent Missile Activity
Trump's comments come despite North Korea having conducted several ballistic missile tests so far this year, including two in August ahead of the current joint exercise. The most recent launch, detected last Wednesday, was picked up by both South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff and Japan's Defense Ministry.
A Long History of Skepticism Toward the Drills
Wednesday's comments continue a pattern stretching back to Trump's first term, when he repeatedly criticized the exercises as unnecessarily costly and provocative. Following his first summit with Kim in Singapore in June 2018, Trump announced the US would suspend the "war games," calling them "provocative" and saying halting them would "save us a tremendous amount of money" — a decision that reportedly blindsided both the Pentagon and South Korea's military at the time. He reiterated similar complaints in 2019, describing the drills at various points as "ridiculous and expensive" after receiving a letter from Kim complaining about them, and again in later years, at one point telling reporters, "He wasn't happy with the war games... You know, I've never liked it either," siding with Kim's characterization over that of the longtime US ally.
What This Signals
North Korea has consistently framed the joint US-South Korea exercises as rehearsals for invasion, a characterization the US and its allies have long rejected, maintaining the drills are purely defensive in nature. Roughly 28,000 US troops remain stationed in South Korea. Trump's renewed criticism of the exercises, paired with his confirmed plans for another meeting with Kim, suggests a continuation of the same diplomatic approach that defined his first-term outreach to Pyongyang — one that has repeatedly drawn concern from foreign policy analysts and, at times, from the Pentagon and South Korean officials themselves over how such concessions are made without extensive prior coordination.
What's Next
With the current exercises now set to end Friday and a Trump-Kim meeting reportedly on the calendar for later this year, attention will likely turn to whether South Korean officials publicly respond to Trump's characterization of the drills, and what specific denuclearization goals — if any — the administration intends to pursue at the anticipated summit. For continuing coverage, see ABC News.