Trump's Overtures to Kim Jong Un and Downscaled War Games Threaten South Korea's Path to Self-Defense

By suddenly scaling down war games with South Korea, US President Donald Trump risks working against his own stated goal of having Seoul assume more responsibility for its own defense. The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, involving tens of thousands of troops, have been cut in half at Washington’s request, after Trump said last weekend that the exercises antagonized his friend, North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un, while also costing the US a lot of money.

These exercises “send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile,” Trump posted on Truth Social on Sunday in what appeared to be an attempt to appease the reclusive Kim, who Trump is eager to meet with again. The “hostile” part is hard to reconcile with the defensive nature of the exercises and is strikingly similar to how North Korea’s state media have described the drills. Washington and Seoul have said repeatedly they are about deterrence and defense, not about taking territory north of the demilitarized zone that has divided the Koreas since the armistice struck in 1953.

Contained within the military exercises is training to give South Korea something it hasn’t had since the Korean War began in 1950: wartime operational control of the combined South Korea-US forces on the peninsula, analysts point out. It’s a key goal for both countries. Once Seoul shows it can take on that burden, Washington can take a backseat in any future conflict, providing some firepower but letting South Korea assume most of the responsibility and cost of its defense.

South Korean President Lee Jae Myung on Wednesday said he agreed with Trump’s opinion that South Korea should take responsibility for its own security in the Korean Peninsula, by rapidly increasing its defense spending to 3.5% of GDP. He also said the decision by Trump to shorten the drills “feels like a major decision filled with deep consideration for creating peace on the Korean Peninsula, beyond hostility and confrontation.”

The current control set-up came about shortly after the start of the Korean War, when South Korea turned command of its forces over to Washington, which – vastly better equipped and more experienced – was more suited to dealing with the communist threat at the dividing line. Control of South Korean troops was assumed by United Nations Command, and in 1978, by the Combined Forces Command (CFC), which has always been led by an American general.

The CFC gave peacetime operational control of South Korean forces to Seoul in 1994, but wartime control has remained with Washington. Calls for change and timelines to accomplish it have been pushed back several times since, leaving in place a status quo that is no longer needed. Over the past several years, South Korea has emerged as a world-class military power – not quite on the level of the US or China, but certainly capable of defending itself against North Korea.

Citing that ability, Lee on Tuesday used the launch of this year’s exercises to try to bring new momentum to a campaign promise he made in 2025 to bring wartime operational control back into Seoul’s hands by 2030. “From the aspect of weapons systems and military strength, our capabilities to defend ourselves is already among the top few in the world. It’s not an exaggeration to say that we are more than capable,” Lee said Tuesday.

But Trump has thrown a spanner into the works. The plan was to use the Ulchi Freedom Shield drills to assess systems so Seoul could assume wartime operational control, Yu Ji-hoon, a research fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, wrote in The Diplomat. “A major last-minute change could therefore affect more than readiness; it could complicate an alliance project that Washington itself has long encouraged,” Yu wrote.