US, South Korea Suspend Joint Military Exercise

Officials to meet this week on subsequent war games

During last week’s summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the US promised to suspend all joint military exercises with South Korea. This was important because joint exercises between the two have been focused on threatening North Korea.

So it was unsurprising when on Monday, the South Korean Defense Ministry confirmed that the two nations have agreed to suspend the Freedom Guardian war games, which were scheduled for August. Some officials suggested the exercise could still happen if the talks fell apart.

Even more curiously, officials say that there still has not been a decision on suspending any war games scheduled for beyond August. South Korean officials did, however, say there would be high-level meetings with the US this week.

Though it seems South Korea wasn’t totally in on the decision to suspend the war games as part of US-North Korea diplomacy, it seems to be taking an awfully long time to suspend all those war games going forward.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.