Inside the tension that drove Trump’s South Korea alliance from ‘historic new era’ to military pullback

The decision came just three days after Marco Rubio called South Korea an ‘indispensable partner’ in a ‘historic new era’

August 19, 2026 5:00am EDT / Fox News

By Morgan Phillips

Expert explains why Trump abruptly cut South Korea drills

Victor Cha says Trump’s frustration with trade and investment delays, his desire to reengage Kim Jong Un and his view that wealthy South Korea should shoulder more defense costs all factored into the decision.

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President Donald Trump is scaling back major joint military exercises with South Korea after Seoul declined to support U.S. operations against Iran, a sharp U-turn with an ally his administration publicly praised just days prior.

The move came just three days after Secretary of State Marco Rubio called South Korea an “indispensable partner” and said the allies had entered a “historic new era” of cooperation following Trump’s state visit to Seoul last fall.

Victor Cha, the Korea chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Fox News Digital that Trump appears to see the drill reduction as a win-win for the U.S. — pressure Seoul to move faster on investment and burden-sharing while offering Kim incentives to reopen diplomacy.

“He sees this as a two for one,” Cha said. “A combination of things led to Trump’s frustration that South Korea is not moving the trade and investment framework agreement on investments faster and his desire to meet the North Korean leader.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump stand inside the demilitarized zone (DMZ) separating South and North Korea on June 30, 2019, in Panmunjom, South Korea.(Handout photo by Dong-A Ilbo via Getty Images/Getty Images)

TRUMP ORDERS MAJOR CUT TO US-SOUTH KOREA DRILLS AS NORTH KOREA RAMPS UP MISSILE TESTS

Behind the administration’s recent praise of Seoul, strains have been building, potentially leading to the mixed-messaging.

Trump has grown frustrated with the slow rollout of a $350 billion trade and investment framework, commercial disputes involving American companies and what he sees as South Korea’s unwillingness to do more for U.S. priorities, Cha detailed.

“That combination of things led Trump to make a decision where he said, ‘Hey, yeah, I’m gonna scale down these exercises maybe it’ll get a response from Kim Jong-un. At the same time, the South Koreans are rich, they should be doing their own exercises and like we should not be paying for them.’”

The deal would bring substantial South Korean investment to the United States while offering Seoul expanded cooperation on shipbuilding and nuclear-powered submarines.

But the first investments have moved slowly, despite Trump’s earlier threat to raise tariffs on South Korean goods by 25%, while parallel agreements with Japan are advancing faster.

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The pressure on Seoul comes as Trump returns to another unfinished project from his first term: diplomacy with Kim.

Trump’s tumultuous relationship with the North Korean leader swung between threats of “fire and fury” and historic summits. The first was in Singapore in 2018 and the second in Hanoi in 2019, which was followed by a third meeting at the Korean demilitarized zone later that year.

NORTH KOREA EXPERT WARNS US CAN ‘NEVER TAKE THEIR EYE OFF’ KIM JONG UN FOLLOWING MISSILE TEST DURING IRAN WAR

The formal encounters made Trump the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader, but the diplomacy ended without a denuclearization deal after negotiations collapsed over the terms of sanctions relief and North Korea’s nuclear program.

In announcing the exercise cut, Trump wrote that the drills “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile” to North Korea, which he said “has been unthreatening and respectful” during his second term.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for more details. A War Department official said the department is “actively working on executing the commander in chief’s directive,” while declining to offer details.

In this March 12, 2016, file photo, Marines of the U.S., left, and South Korea, wearing blue headbands on their helmets, take positions after landing on a beach during the joint military combined amphibious exercise, called Ssangyong, part of the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle military exercises, in Pohang, South Korea.

Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, has said her brother retains good memories of Trump, but North Korea has expanded its nuclear and missile capabilities since the first summits while deepening its ties with Russia and China.

Pyongyang has not ruled out returning to diplomacy, but it has also signaled that Washington would first need to abandon its demand for North Korean denuclearization.

NORTH KOREA LAUNCHES ANOTHER BALLISTIC MISSILE AS US, SOUTH KOREA PREPARE FOR MILITARY DRILLS

“Where they haven’t ruled out negotiations with the U.S., but they have basically said, unless the U.S. accepts their nuclear status, there isn’t really a reason to talk,” Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center and director of 38 North, told Fox News Digital.

The drills are more than a show of force. They are where American and South Korean troops practice how to fight together if deterrence fails — from moving forces and equipment to sharing targeting information and operating under a single command structure.

Before Trump’s order, this year’s Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise was set to incorporate lessons from the war in Ukraine, including drone warfare, GPS disruption and the prospect of losing communications in a crisis.

Those are no longer theoretical concerns for the alliance: North Korean troops have fought alongside Russian forces and brought battlefield experience back to the peninsula.

SOUTH KOREAN PRESIDENT JUMPS TO INVEST IN MILITARY AFTER TRUMP CUTS JOINT EXERCISES

“The exercises are the biggest military maneuver exercise that the Alliance does every year,” Cha said. “There’s nothing that can substitute for live fire and military exercises.”

Town said the last-minute nature of the decision risks creating uncertainty inside the alliance.

“This last-minute haphazard way of sending this message really sends a lot of mixed messages, but also creates a lot of angst in the U.S.-South Korea alliance,” she said.

U.S. General Xavier T. Brunson, commander of the ROK/US Combined Forces Command (CFC), the United States Forces Korea (USFK) and the United Nations Command (UNC), walks on a pontoon bridge with U.S. and South Korean Army soldiers during a U.S.-South Korea joint river-crossing exercise, which is a part of the annual Freedom Shield joint military training, near the demilitarized zone separating South and North Korea, in Yeoncheon, South Korea, March 14, 2026.(Kim Soo-hyeon/Reuters)

Trump’s order drew bipartisan criticism on Capitol Hill.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., said: “North and South Korea are still technically at war.”

“Our ability to help defend our ally against the North Koreans is because our forces are well-trained and able to coordinate with the South Koreans. Hollowing out these joint exercises is shortsighted and a mistake,” the retired U.S. Navy captain added.

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Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, a Republican, said reducing the drills “does nothing more than free up thousands of North Korea’s troops to support Putin’s systematic kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder of innocent Ukrainian citizens.”

“President Trump is playing right into Kim Jong-Un’s hands,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., claimed on X.

“Our alliance with South Korea is critical to U.S. security and announcing a decision to unilaterally scale back joint exercises, over social media, all while touting a ‘very good relationship’ with Kim, is a gross miscalculation,” she added.

“Trump is rewarding a regime that sends weapons and troops to fight for Russia and has a long history of cooperation with Iran. Undermining our allies while making concessions to our adversaries is not a show of strength—it only emboldens those who threaten us.”