President Trump announced Sunday that he has ordered the Pentagon to sharply scale back this week's major joint military exercise with South Korea, citing what he described as a warm relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and irritation that Seoul had declined to help pressure Iran.

"Based on the fact that it is too late to cancel, I have instructed Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to substantially reduce the Joint Military Exercises!" Trump wrote, using the title the administration has adopted for the defense secretary's role, according to NBC News.

"Inappropriate and hostile"

The exercise in question, Ulchi Freedom Shield 2026, is a 10-day, all-domain combined drill involving roughly 18,000 South Korean troops alongside American forces, designed to sharpen the allies' joint response to a potential conflict on the Korean Peninsula. It was set to begin Monday — timing Trump's own team acknowledged left no real option to cancel it outright, only to shrink its scope.

Trump argued the drills sent a "signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile" toward North Korea, which he described as "unthreatening and respectful" during his time in office, pointing to his "very good" personal relationship with Kim. The framing echoes Trump's long-standing preference for smaller-scale, lower-cost joint exercises with Seoul, a position he has revisited repeatedly since his first term.

"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!'"

Trump tied the decision to a separate grievance, saying he had asked South Korea's government to join U.S. efforts against Iran's nuclear program and was rebuffed. "While somewhat unrelated (?)," he wrote, South Korea's refusal to help on Iran factored into his call to cut back the drills — a linkage that drew swift attention from foreign-policy watchers given the two issues have no formal connection, per Axios.

Allies left scrambling

The abrupt, hours-before-kickoff announcement left U.S. and South Korean commanders to rework the exercise's scope on the fly, according to Bloomberg. Ulchi Freedom Shield has run annually for years as a cornerstone of the U.S.-South Korea alliance's readiness posture, integrating air, land, sea, space and cyber scenarios; a sudden scaling-back raises questions in Seoul about the durability of the security guarantee that has underpinned the peninsula's uneasy peace for decades.

Trump has periodically curtailed the joint drills before, including during his first term, when he suspended major exercises after his 2018 Singapore summit with Kim — a move that was later partially reversed. This latest reduction comes as Trump's broader Iran policy escalates, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent separately weighing new secondary sanctions targeting countries and companies that continue buying Iranian oil.

What's next

The Pentagon has not detailed exactly which components of Ulchi Freedom Shield 2026 will be cut, and South Korea's government had not issued a formal public response to the announcement as of Sunday night. Analysts expect Seoul to press privately for reassurances that the reduction won't extend into next year's exercise cycle, even as the current drill proceeds Monday in a diminished form.