North Korea-South Korea Relations

North Korea: Trump's statement "not worth commenting on"

Donald Trump will "significantly reduce" the joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States, the American president said last week.

The statement is "not worth commenting on," says dictator Kim Jong-Un's sister Kim Yo-Jong according to AFP.

- We find it completely uninteresting, she says.

She adds that the relationship between Trump and Kim Jong-Un is "excellent", but at the same time denies that she is aware of any contact between them.

Trump's USA  North Korea-South Korea Relations
South Korea and US exercise to end on Friday

South Korea and the US joint military exercise will end early on Friday instead of continuing as planned until August 27. South Korea announced this overnight, according to international media.

The announcement comes after Donald Trump this weekend gave Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth the order to "significantly reduce" the joint military exercises between the US and South Korea. The president justified the decision in a post on social media where he pointed to his "very good" relationship with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

Expert: Trump ready to throw allies under the bus

This week's military exercise between the US and South Korea will end early after Donald Trump's announcement this weekend that they should be reduced "significantly", due to the president's good relationship with North Korea's leader Kim Jong Un.

The development is problematic for both South Korea and other allies of the US. This is what Henrik Chetan Aspengren, head of the Asia Program at the Swedish Institute for Foreign Policy, says in a comment to Dagens Nyheter.

– It is a clear trend during Trump's second term that he is prepared to throw allies under the bus.

Sources: Donald Trump wants to meet Kim Jong-Un this fall

Donald Trump is keen to schedule a meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un, reports the Wall Street Journal. According to sources to the newspaper, the idea is to arrange the meeting in connection with the president's next trip to Asia in November.

Trump's ambition is to revive the talks on North Korea's nuclear weapons, which for him personally would have been an important diplomatic victory. Ahead of the mid-term elections, his foreign policy agenda is overshadowed by the Iran war and the continued lack of progress in the talks between Ukraine and Russia.

South Korea supports the idea of ​​new talks in the hope that they will contribute to increased stability on the Korean Peninsula. However, analysts warn that a deal between the United States and North Korea could be harmful to South Korea.

“It is yet another attempt to appease a despotic dictator, based on the mistaken belief that a personal relationship will actually help achieve US foreign policy goals,” former CIA chief Bruce Klingner told the newspaper.