President Donald Trump says his decision to scale back military drills with South Korea is due to the Asian nation’s refusal to get involved in Iran, while the dictator of North Korea shows the White House “great respect.”
Trump, speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, said that the annual joint exercises with South Korea were slashed because Seoul stopped “paying for their protection” and said “no thanks” to participating in Operation Epic Fury.
“South Korea has been protected by us for many, many years, and during my first term, they agreed to pay close to $3 billion a year for protection… at my request,” Trump told the reporters.
He added that Seoul officials “weren’t happy about it, but they agreed” before those fees were waived under former President Joe Biden.
“When I called recently, the president of South Korea — 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 recalled. “And I said, wait, we have 39,000 soldiers over there — guarding you from Kim Jong Un, your next-door neighbor — and you’re not gonna help us on a very easy military operation in Iran? That’s strange.”
In a Truth Social post on Sunday, Trump announced that the U.S. would dramatically scale back joint exercises with South Korea, ostensibly as a token of friendship to Kim. He praised North Korea as “unthreatening and respectful” to the United States under his administration and called the annual military drills with South Korea “not only costly,” but “totally inappropriate and hostile.”
Asked on Monday why the North Korean leader has not responded to his statement of friendship, Trump suggested he already has, though he did not clarify whether he had received such a response in private. No public reply has been observed from Pyongyang or in North Korean state media outlets.
“Kim Jon Un has always treated me with great respect,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Monday. “I understand him, he understands me […] I get along with him very well.”
Trump and Kim Jong Un courted each other aggressively during his first administration, culminating in a presidential trip to the Korean border — where he became the first U.S. leader to set foot in the hermit kingdom. Summits between the two countries were held in 2018 and 2019, but ultimately, Pyongyang’s refusal to denuclearize destroyed the negotiations.
He previously cancelled joint exercises with Seoul in 2018 amid the peace negotiations.
Trump’s treatment of South Korea is not unique, having taken punitive measures against a slew of allies who refused to back his invasion of Iran. He has toyed with reducing troops stationed across Europe following a lack of aid coming from the continent and repeatedly threatened to pull out of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization because the alliance “wasn’t there when we needed them.”
North Korea is also experiencing a period of geopolitical relevance not seen for decades as it aids the Russian government in the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.
US IS INSUFICIENTLY PREPARED FOR NORTH KOREA TO USE A TACTICAL NUKE AGAINST SOUTHERN NEIGHBORS
Soldiers of the Korean People’s Army have for years served as support personnel for the Russian military, initially deployed as guards and patrol staff. Ukraine asserts that there is evidence that the North Korean troops are becoming more actively engaged in the conflict, having captured two of them alive last year.
North Korea has also become an industrious manufacturer of war drones, augmenting Moscow’s capacity to produce the unmanned aerial vehicles that have defined the conflict.