South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Wednesday that officials in his country were not aware of Donald Trump’s decision to scale back joint military operations between Washington, D.C., and Seoul before the U.S. president announced it on Truth Social.
“Neither our government nor U.S. officials knew what President Trump wrote on his Truth Social,” Cho said during a meeting of South Korea’s National Assembly Committee on Foreign Affairs and Unification.
Cho said Trump’s move to scale back the joint exercises caught the South Korean government by surprise, saying “we were not notified in advance,” according to South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency.
On Sunday evening, Trump announced that he told War Secretary Pete Hegseth to “substantially reduce” joint military training exercises between the U.S. and South Korea. He attributed the drawback of military exercises to South Korea’s lack of help in the United States’s war with Iran.
“When I called recently, the president of South Korea [Lee Jae Myung] — who I like, I think he’s very nice actually — but I called him and said, ‘Would you like to give us a little hand?’ He said, ‘No, thanks,’” Trump told reporters on Monday. “And I said, wait, we have 39,000 soldiers over there — guarding you from [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor — and you’re not going to help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? That’s strange.”
Trump’s announcement came just one day before U.S. troops began an annual joint exercise with South Korea called Ulchi Freedom Shield. The mission is aimed at bolstering South Korea’s defenses against possible attacks from North Korea. South Korean officials announced that the 2026 mission, initially set to take place in 11 days, would be shortened by six days after Trump’s announcement.
In his Sunday announcement, Trump said he has a “very good relationship with Kim Jong Un” and called the operations with South Korea “costly.”
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the White House for comment.