트럼프 “한미훈련 대폭 축소” 지시, 이재명은 이란 요청 거절

President Trump said on August 16 that he has ordered Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sharply scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, citing his personal rapport with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Posting on Truth Social, Trump wrote that given how well he and Kim get along, he does not like that the United States has long agreed to participate in joint drills with South Korea, adding that the exercises are costly and that Washington bears most of that cost as usual. He went on to call the drills an inappropriate and hostile signal toward a country that has not been a threat to the United States and has shown it respect since he took office — a framing that both categorizes North Korea as non-threatening and treats the joint exercises themselves as a hostile gesture. Trump said that since it is too late to cancel the drills outright, he had directed Hegseth to sharply cut their scale. The remarks came just as Ulchi Freedom Shield, the allies’ annual joint exercise running from August 17 to 27, was getting underway — Trump posted at 6:04 a.m. Korea time on the very day the drills began.

This is the first time since starting his second term that Trump has publicly criticized the joint exercises this directly and ordered a reduction. He voiced similar skepticism during his first term, once calling the drills a waste of money after his 2018 Singapore summit with Kim, saying there was no need to spend money on joint training while negotiating with the North — remarks that were followed by the actual suspension or scaling-back of some exercises. North Korea has consistently criticized the joint drills, and its ballistic missile launches into the East Sea on August 6 and 12, just ahead of this year’s exercise, have been read as a further show of opposition. Trump’s latest move can be read as an attempt to send Pyongyang a conciliatory signal by shrinking the drills even as that opposition continues, and his choice to invoke his personal relationship with Kim as one reason for the cut has fueled speculation about a possible resumption of US-North Korea dialogue.

In the same post, Trump added what he called a “somewhat unrelated” note: that he had asked President Lee Jae-myung whether South Korea would join US efforts toward Iran’s denuclearization, and that Lee had replied, “No thanks!” Trump did not specify exactly what role he had asked Seoul to play, but the remark reads as public confirmation that Washington sought Korean cooperation on Iran policy and did not get it.

Reading the two halves of the post together is what makes it notable. Trump is citing personal trust to justify shrinking a joint exercise that underpins deterrence on the peninsula — while the ally he is scaling back that exercise for turned down, without elaboration, a request for solidarity on an issue central to Washington’s broader security strategy. An alliance is a structure of mutual obligation, not a one-way arrangement in which one side extends trust and the other collects the benefits while declining to reciprocate when asked. If the Lee administration wants a reduced military burden and continued extended deterrence from the United States, it cannot keep declining, without explanation, to stand with Washington on the security challenges that matter to it.

There is also a deterrence question that does not depend on any president’s personal chemistry. Trust between two leaders can change with the political calendar, but North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities do not shrink to match it. A joint-exercise reduction grounded in personal rapport risks treating a structural deterrence question as though it were a personal one. The National Assembly and the foreign policy establishment need to press the administration for a clear explanation of why it turned down the Iran request, and to seek a firm American commitment that scaling back Ulchi Freedom Shield will not translate into a real erosion of deterrence against North Korea.

An alliance grows only through mutual give and take, not through one side building up credit while the other quietly cashes it in. Seoul should treat this moment as a warning to restore reciprocity to the alliance, not as an opportunity to enjoy a lighter load while asking nothing of itself.