Trump orders the Pentagon to scale back joint exercises with South Korea
The order came hours before the manoeuvres were due to begin, and the president tied it to a request for talks that he says Kim Jong Un has answered warmly.
US President Donald Trump instructed the Pentagon on Sunday to cut back sharply on the joint military exercises the United States holds with South Korea, hours before this year's manoeuvres were due to begin.
He gave as his reason that the drills carry a hostile message to North Korea that he considers out of place, and pointed to what he describes as his good relationship with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un.
Trump said the following day that he had asked for talks and that Kim had answered very positively, and argued that keeping a line open to Pyongyang leaves South Korea safer than the exercises do. No date, venue or agenda for any meeting has been set out, and nothing has been heard from the North Korean side to confirm his account.
The exercises are an annual fixture and have run for decades. What has not been spelled out is the scale of the cut: neither the White House nor the Pentagon has said which parts of the programme are being dropped, shortened or moved.
That gap is the part that carries weight on the peninsula. The drills are the mechanism through which two armies practise operating as one, and a reduction decided at short notice reaches units already assembled for it. Seoul learns the shape of its own defence arrangements from the same announcement everyone else reads.
The wider question the decision raises is whether the president is opening a track towards talks with Kim after years without them, and whether a concession offered before any negotiation begins buys anything in return.