“Neither our government nor U.S. officials knew what President Trump wrote on his Truth Social," Cho told the National Assembly Committee on Foreign Affairs and Unification. "We were not notified in advance.”
Read More: Trump’s South Korea Shift Tests a Key U.S. Alliance
Trump called the joint exercises “costly” and “totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said has been “unthreatening and respectful” throughout his presidency.
A Defense Department official tells TIME that the U.S. has “substantially reduced” Exercise Ulchi Freedom Shield—an annual, large-scale training dating back roughly 50 years that combines multiple sectors of the military designed to prepare a U.S.-Korean joint response to international threats. The Ulchi exercise began on Monday and was supposed to last for 11 days, but will now end on Aug. 21, one week earlier than originally scheduled, the official says.
South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff also confirmed that it had agreed to the reductions at the request of the U.S.
"We are paying greater attention to the reality that joint military exercises between the U.S. and South Korea have continued and are still ongoing, and this is an unmistakable expression of hostility toward North Korea," Kim Yo Jong, the sister of the country’s leader, said on Wednesday, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency. She added that Pyongyang had “no interest whatsoever" in Trump’s announcement and that “reducing the scale or duration of the drills does not change the provocative and aggressive nature of the military exercises.”
On Wednesday, Trump said that he would meet with Kim Jong Un this year, but did not elaborate further.
Trump, who met Kim Jong Un face-to-face three times during his first term, has maintained a friendly relationship with the North Korean leader throughout his presidencies. "I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un,” Trump said in August of last year. “I hope it stays that way, I think it will. I have a very good relationship. I understand him.”
The President’s recent move to halt joint exercises resembles one he made in his first term. Following a summit in Singapore in 2018 during which Trump met with Kim Jong Un, making him the first sitting president to hold a summit with a North Korean leader, Trump suspended the Ulchi exercise with South Korea in the name of diplomacy with North Korea.
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