South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said Tuesday that maintaining peace is the country’s top priority, but it must also be ready for the ‘worst-case scenario’ — a warning issued as Washington moves to scale back joint military drills with Seoul.
Lee’s comments follow an order from U.S. President Donald Trump directing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to ‘substantially reduce’ the annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, according to a CNBC translation of the Korean government release. Trump said the drills risked sending ‘a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile’ to North Korea.
In a social media post, Trump cited his ‘very good’ relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and described the country as ‘unthreatening and respectful.’
Lee pushed back on that framing, stressing that the exercises — which began Monday and run through Aug. 27 — are defensive in nature and not designed to attack the North or escalate tensions on the peninsula.
About 18,000 South Korean military personnel are taking part in the drills, which Pyongyang has long condemned as a rehearsal for an invasion.
Pyongyang’s response
North Korea’s foreign affairs ministry said in a statement last week that Washington had not concealed its aim ‘to complete preparations for the substantial military confrontation’ with the North. The ministry added that the so-called ‘annual’ and ‘defensive’ exercises were, in effect, ‘a rehearsal for an aggressive war.’
The reduction order comes as Trump also pressed Seoul for support in U.S. operations against Iran. On Monday, he said: ‘We have 39,000 soldiers over there guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next door neighbor, and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran.’
U.S. Forces Korea, the command authority for American troops in the South, consists of roughly 28,500 personnel, according to the source.
Officials from South Korea’s presidential office said they are ‘closely discussing practical and military contribution measures with the U.S. side,’ while weighing factors such as readiness on the Korean Peninsula and domestic legal procedures, South Korean media reported Monday.
Analysts see a familiar tactic
Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on a CSIS podcast that Trump is using the exercise timing and rhetoric to entice Kim into a meeting — a pattern the president has deployed before.
‘This is not something that is unusual. We have seen the president use military exercises as a tool in the past,’ Cha said. In 2018, Trump suspended joint drills while negotiations were underway between Washington and Pyongyang.
Cha added that the move also serves to shift the spotlight away from Iran, saying: ‘Trump’s tired of Iran … so he’s shifting to something else.’
Source: www.cnbc.com — https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/18/trump-south-korea-military-exercises-iran-north-korea.html
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