WASHINGTON — President Trump on Sunday ordered the Pentagon to substantially reduce annual joint military exercises with South Korea, citing his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul's refusal to help the United States in its war against Iran.

The Truth Social directive to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reversed the administration's public posture toward its most important Asian ally just as this year's Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise began on Monday, and it deepens a pattern in which a Pentagon strained by a six-month campaign against Iran has pulled resources from Asia even as North Korea resumes ballistic missile tests.

What Trump ordered

Trump wrote that the drills "send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile" to a North Korea that "has been unthreatening and respectful" during his second term. He said the exercises were too far along to cancel outright and told Hegseth to "substantially reduce" them. The 11-day exercise, which involves about 18,000 South Korean troops alongside U.S. forces and personnel from 11 of the 18 member states of the United Nations Command, is scheduled to run through Aug. 27.

The Iran link

Trump tied the decision to a recent request that South Korea join the U.S. campaign against Tehran. "I recently asked the President of South Korea if they would like to join us in the Denuclearization of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and they said, 'No thanks!'" he wrote. He has voiced similar frustration with Japan, France and the United Kingdom for declining to contribute militarily to the six-month war.

A reversal in tone

The order marks an about-face from the administration's own recent language. In May, Hegseth praised South Korea at the Pentagon for its "commitment to increase defense spending" and its "leadership in assuming primary responsibility for the security of the Korean Peninsula," calling it a model of "alliance burden-sharing that all of America's partners would do well to follow." Seoul this year committed $350 billion to investments in the United States, and about 28,500 American troops remain stationed on the peninsula.

Seoul and Pyongyang

South Korea's presidential Blue House said it was reviewing the post and hoped that a "friendly relationship between the US and North Korean leaders will lead to meaningful dialogue." North Korea, whose foreign ministry last week called the drills "a rehearsal for an aggressive war," had not responded to Trump's post by Sunday evening. Lim Eul-chul, a North Korea specialist at Kyungnam University, told the Guardian that Pyongyang was unlikely to reciprocate. "The North will only view it as meaningful if the joint exercises are cancelled in their entirety rather than scaled back," he said.

The military view

Days earlier, U.S. and South Korean officers said the drills would incorporate lessons drawn from more than 14,000 North Korean troops who have fought alongside Russian forces in Ukraine's Kursk region, including drone tactics and GPS disruption. Sen. Mark Kelly, an Arizona Democrat and former Navy pilot, wrote hours after Trump's post that "hollowing out these joint exercises is shortsighted and a mistake." Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said scaling the drills back "can damage alliance coordination, slow the process of South Korea taking on greater responsibility for its own defence, and weaken deterrence against possible conflicts in Asia."

Counterpoint

Trump has done this before. He suspended the major U.S.-South Korean exercises in 2018 after his first Singapore summit with Kim, arguing that stopping the "war games" would save the United States "a tremendous amount of money," and the drills were pared back again in 2020 during the pandemic; both times the alliance held and the exercises were rebuilt under new names. Sunday's wire coverage carried no on-record defense of the new directive from administration officials or Republican lawmakers beyond the president's own social-media post.

Ulchi Freedom Shield is scheduled to run through Aug. 27. Hegseth has not said which components will be cut.