Joint South Korea drills shrink as Japan looks to Australia and India for munitions
Joint exercises with South Korea will shrink substantially, Donald Trump said. Japan's defence minister began a three-day trip for munitions ties with Australia and India, while Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin traded liberation-day pledges.
Geopolitics··Midday
Trump shrinks the South Korea drills
Donald Trump said the United States would substantially reduce its joint exercises with South Korea, citing his relationship with Kim Jong Un and Seoul's refusal to join the American campaign to denuclearise Iran. Writing on Truth Social, Trump said the exercises were costly and sent a signal that was totally inappropriate and hostile, adding that it was too late to cancel this year's round. Seoul said the exercise beginning on Monday would proceed as scheduled. American and South Korean commanders announced Ulchi Freedom Shield a week earlier, saying it would run 11 days with about 18,000 South Korean soldiers; about 28,500 American military personnel are stationed in the country. North Korea's foreign ministry called the exercise a rehearsal for an aggressive war on Friday. The BBC reported Trump suspended the drills entirely in 2018, and that they were scaled back again in 2020 during the pandemic.[1]
Japan looks to Australia and India for munitions
Japan's defence minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, is starting a three-day trip aimed at deepening defence industrial cooperation, as Tokyo tries to reduce its reliance on American munitions supplies that prolonged wars in the Middle East and Ukraine could deplete. Koizumi is due to meet his Australian and New Zealand counterparts in Canberra, then India's defence minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi. The agenda includes exporting an upgraded Mogami-class frigate to New Zealand and selling Japan's Unicorn stealth communication system to India. Rintaro Inoue, a research fellow at Tokyo's Institute of Geoeconomics, said Japan had until recently assumed it could rely heavily on America in a contingency.[2]
Kim and Putin trade liberation-day pledges
Kim Jong Un replied to a congratulatory message from Vladimir Putin marking the anniversary of Japan's 1945 surrender, saying ties had carried forward a history of common struggle. Putin said cooperation would continue in all the sectors, KCNA reported. The Russian ship Pallada docked at Wonsan on Saturday for a goodwill visit tied to the anniversary and was met by North Korean provincial officials and Russian embassy staff, KCNA said. Pyongyang and Moscow have moved closer since North Korea began sending troops and weapons to support Russia's war in Ukraine, its largest involvement in a war since 1950. The exchange came a day after South Korean President Lee Jae Myung used his Liberation Day speech to call for talks replacing the Korean War armistice with a peace settlement; Pyongyang has rejected his earlier overtures.[3]
