South Korea and US to scale down joint military drills
Expected talks in May between US and North Korea means shortened annual exercises, according to South’s media
South Korea and the United States will scale down and shorten annual joint military exercises in light of a diplomatic thaw with Pyongyang, a report said on Friday.
The Key Resolve and Foal Eagle drills held every spring regularly infuriate the nuclear-armed North, which usually condemns them as preparations for invasion and responds with provocations of its own, ratcheting tensions higher.
But the two Koreas and the US are in the throes of an Olympics-led rapprochement, with South Korea announcing plans for a summit between Seoul and Pyongyang next month, and US President Donald Trump said to be meeting the North’s leader Kim Jong-un by the end of May.
The joint exercises were delayed to avoid clashing with the Pyeongchang Winter Games in the South last month.
But according to a senior official in Seoul’s presidential office, Kim told a visiting South Korean envoy last week that he would “understand” if the drills went ahead.
