US Scales Back South Korea Drills; Trump Cites Cost, Signal

Too late to cancel this year's drills, Trump said, so he had Hegseth scale them back.

Ulchi Freedom Shield runs 11 days. It is designed to steel US and South Korean forces for the defense of the South against the nuclear-armed North. Pyongyang has always decried the drills as dress rehearsals for an invasion.

The US stations about 28,500 troops in South Korea, a presence that dates to the 1950-53 Korean War, which ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty. American forces typically hold regular exercises with their South Korean counterparts. Trump's post also reached back to his first-term engagement with Kim, a summit run that failed to produce progress on the North's nuclear program.

Sunday's post extends the pressure Trump has put on NATO allies, whom he criticized for refusing to back the war against Iran, now in its sixth month and without progress toward a negotiated settlement. The same message took aim at Seoul on that count; Trump said he recently asked South Korea's president to join the "Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran" and was told "No thanks!"