President Donald Trump said North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jung Un has been “respectful,” making US and South Korean joint war games “totally inappropriate and hostile.”
“Based on my very good relationship with Kim Jong Un, of North Korea, I was not happy with the fact that the United States had, long ago, agreed to participate in Joint Military Exercises with South Korea,” the President wrote on Truth Social Tuesday. “These exercises are not only costly, with much of these costs paid for by the United States of America (as usual!), but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile, to a Country that, as long as Donald J. Trump has been President, has been unthreatening and respectful.”
The US holds annual war games with South Korea dubbed Freedom Shield. Those military drills escalate tensions on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea views the war games as preparations for a regime change in Pyongyang, and often conducts multiple missile tests in response.
Earlier this month, Trump announced that the US would scale back this year’s Freedom Shield drills. In addition to his relationship with Kim, Trump said a second reason for limiting the size of the war games was South Korea’s refusal to assist the US war against Iran.
“While somewhat unrelated (?), 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!” he wrote.
Pyongyang has not responded to Trump’s request for a meeting with Kim. Kim Yo Jong, the sister of the Supreme Leader, said she was unaware if her brother had any communications with Trump.
Kim has recently changed the North Korean constitution to explicitly include nuclear weapons as part of its national defense. Pyongyang says it will not engage in talks with Washington until the US drops its demand that North Korea give up its nuclear weapons.
Trump and Kim met three times during the President’s first term. However, the summits did not result in an agreement between Washington and Pyongyang.
