Blindsided by Trump Yet Still Expressing “Respect”: 

Will South Korea Have a Seat at the Table in a North Korean Nuclear Deal?

Lee Yong-soo

Director, Unification and North Korea Research Division,

Institute for Liberal Democracy

Among the developments that have most unsettled diplomatic circles in recent weeks, it was neither President Trump’s revelation that North Korea possesses “57 nuclear weapons” nor his bombshell declaration that he intends to meet Kim Jong Un before the end of the year. Rather, it was President Lee Jae Myung’s response after Trump drastically scaled back the ROK-U.S. Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise: “I express my respect for that decision.” In a social media post, Lee described it as “a major decision born of deep consideration to move beyond hostility and confrontation and build peace on the Korean Peninsula.” He also said that if Trump became the “peacemaker,” he would serve as the “pacemaker.” Washington policy circles were abuzz with speculation over what Lee intended by these remarks. One thing, however, is clear: the circumstances behind the reduction of UFS had little to do with consideration for South Korea.

On August 16, Trump ordered the Department of War to sharply scale back the exercise, making no secret of his dissatisfaction with South Korea. He said he had asked President Lee for cooperation on Iran, only to receive a “No thanks,” and complained that while the United States protects South Korea, South Korea does not help the United States. Axios went so far as to identify South Korea as a casualty of Trump’s “retaliation campaign,” while the prevailing mood in Washington clearly leaned toward viewing the UFS reduction as a punitive measure against Seoul.

Annual combined exercises such as Freedom Shield (FS) in March and UFS in August require anywhere from six months to a year of preparation to coordinate operational plans, the employment of weapons and forces, and command structures. This year’s UFS was scheduled to begin on August 17 and run for 11 days and 10 nights. Yet on the eve of its commencement, Trump’s abrupt directive seriously disrupted an exercise that had taken months of preparation. The entire second phase transitioning from repelling a North Korean attack to counteroffensive operations was scrapped, and numerous field training exercises were canceled. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun told the National Assembly that Seoul “had no prior knowledge whatsoever.” In plain terms, South Korea was blindsided. Trump may be Trump, but under normal circumstances this was serious enough for a government to ask, “Are we really allies?”

1. Despite a Barrage of Warning Signs, Seoul Says the ROK-U.S. Alliance Is “Fine”

To understand President Lee’s reaction, which defied conventional diplomatic logic, one must first look at the worldview of the activist generation that has exerted a major influence on the Democratic Party’s approach to North Korea. They tend to sympathize with North Korea’s fear of and aversion to combined military exercises. For them, it seems less important that the military alliance is the foundation and essence of ROK-U.S. relations and that combined exercises are what sustain it. In August 2021, after Kim Yo Jong demanded the cancellation of the exercises, 74 lawmakers from the Democratic Party and the broader ruling bloc issued a statement calling for their postponement. In fact, under the Moon Jae-in administration, ROK-U.S. combined exercises were repeatedly reduced or suspended. What happened this time was the result of the Democratic Party’s distinctive security outlook converging with Trump’s crass view of alliances.

The disruption of UFS is particularly serious because it occurred amid accumulating misunderstanding and distrust between Seoul and Washington, rather than close coordination. One of the most prominent sources of friction with the U.S. side since the current administration took office has been the clash between Unification Minister Chung Dong-young and the United Nations Command (UNC). After a National Security Office official was denied access to the Demilitarized Zone late last year, Chung repeatedly criticized the UNC in public, invoking “national dignity.” Together with the Democratic Party, he pushed a so-called “DMZ Act” that would transfer authority to approve non-military access to the DMZ to the Ministry of Unification. The UNC objected that the move would violate the Armistice Agreement, and its commander eventually issued a direct warning against the “politicization of security.” The commander of the UNC concurrently serves as commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and the UNC’s position cannot be entirely divorced from Washington’s thinking. Foreign Minister Cho Hyun visited Camp Humphreys the first such visit by a foreign minister in six years in what was interpreted as an effort to ease mounting tensions. Yet the underlying friction remains. Just before the disruption of UFS, the Ministry of National Defense and the UNC were publicly disputing the facts surrounding the proposed establishment of a “Security and Armistice Enforcement Brigade.”

Nor was that all. Following a search and seizure by the special counsel investigating the insurrection case at South Korean military facilities inside Osan Air Base, a letter of protest signed by the deputy commander of U.S. Forces Korea was sent to the Foreign Ministry. When the Korea Fair Trade Commission moved to sanction Coupang, the White House protested that “the Lee Jae Myung government had targeted an American company.” Regarding an expansion of the “strategic flexibility” of U.S. Forces Korea in the event of a Taiwan contingency, President Lee said it would be “difficult to agree readily.” Differences have also persisted over how South Korea’s planned nuclear-powered submarine should be built. Washington is also deeply dissatisfied that the $350 billion in U.S.-bound investment pledged in the tariff negotiations has yet to get off the ground. There are more than enough reasons not to dismiss the UFS disruption as a one-off Trump whim. Yet the ruling party’s secretary on the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee went on television to say that “the ROK-U.S. alliance is in very good shape.”

2. Core Issues and Points of Contention in Extending the Retirement Age

North Korea has been watching all of this unfold. The title of a statement issued by Kim Yo Jong on the night of August 20 was “The Pathetic Plight of Seoul, Now Unable to Play the War Games It So Enjoyed.” Regarding the reduction of UFS, she called it “an inevitable catastrophe brought about by the anachronistic delusions of the South Korean authorities, intoxicated by blind faith in their master,” and “an unprecedented turn of events.” The language was malicious, but the terms “catastrophe” and “upheaval” cut to the heart of the matter. She also mocked South Korea as “a country whose national security is shaken to its core by a single reduction in a joint military exercise.” Her ridicule, ironically, underscored the importance of the combined exercises. The statement came after North Korea fired more than ten short-range ballistic missiles designed to strike South Korea into the East Sea.

Kim specifically used phrases such as “without prior discussion,” “without coordination between the two sides,” “a unilateral directive from the U.S. commander-in-chief,” and “an unexpected incident” in describing the reduction of UFS. She zeroed in on circumstances suggesting that the ROK-U.S. alliance had failed to function normally. Of Lee’s expression of “respect,” she said: “Lee Jae Myung’s double-dealing fawning with embarrassingly ingratiating words in public, then turning around to talk about ‘self-reliant defense’ lays bare South Korea’s contradictory state of anxiety and unease.” This is likely the part that cuts deepest for the Lee administration.

South Korea’s presence and bargaining power vis-?-vis North Korea rest to a substantial degree on the ROK-U.S. alliance. The keys to what Pyongyang wants normalization of relations with Washington, sanctions relief, and regime security are held mostly by Washington, while South Korea’s voice has, to varying degrees, been reflected in U.S. policy decisions. When the alliance was rock-solid in the past, Washington’s message to Pyongyang could be summed up as: “Go through Seoul before coming to Washington.” The close ROK-U.S. alliance itself served as powerful leverage over North Korea. The Moon administration’s efforts to promote a “mediator” or “driver” role, while investing as heavily in diplomacy with Washington as in improving inter-Korean relations, reflected an understanding of this logic.

The diplomatic utility of the Moon administration, which Pyongyang and Washington had acknowledged to some extent, declined rapidly after the breakdown of the Hanoi summit. A major reason was that Seoul exposed differences with Washington while pressing ahead with sanctions relief, inter-Korean economic cooperation, and an end-of-war declaration. The decisive blow came when ROK-U.S.-Japan security cooperation faltered amid an anti-Japan campaign, including then Blue House Senior Secretary Cho Kuk’s reference to Jukchangga (“Song of the Bamboo Spear”) and the “scrapping” of the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) through formal notice of termination. The U.S. State Department took the unusual step of publicly expressing “strong concern and disappointment.” Once trust within the alliance eroded, South Korea’s leverage over North Korea evaporated as well. It was around then that Pyongyang mocked President Moon, saying his conduct was “so ridiculous that even a boiled cow’s head would throw back its head and laugh,” and declared that it had no intention of sitting down with South Korea again.

It is difficult to argue that the situation today is any better than it was under the Moon administration. North Korea has defined inter-Korean relations as those between “two hostile states.” The ROK-U.S. relationship, painstakingly normalized under the Yoon Suk Yeol and Biden administrations, has deteriorated within a year of another change in government to the point where a U.S. president publicly attacks a South Korean president and unilaterally scales back a combined exercise. Trump, who places little value on alliances, bears much of the blame. Even so, to anyone who understands the nature of the ROK-U.S. alliance, this is a chilling development. President Lee’s expression of “respect” looked less like confidence than an attempt to appear unruffled. He called himself a “pacemaker,” but in reality he appeared to be calmly accepting an uncomfortable situation in which South Korea had been reduced to a mere bystander.

3. A Nuclear-Armed North Korean Military Gaining Modern Combat Experience

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently warned that an additional 30,000 to 50,000 North Korean troops could be deployed to Russia. The initial deployment in October 2024 also began as speculation. The day after Zelensky said that 10,000 troops could be sent, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service confirmed the movement of North Korean special forces to Russia. His latest warning therefore cannot simply be dismissed. More than 10,000 North Korean troops have already gained combat experience the first such experience in more than 70 years since the Korean War. The firsthand battlefield experience accumulated by officers, noncommissioned officers, and soldiers returning from deployment is itself an enormous military asset. South Korea’s Vietnam War generation left field units long ago. From a security standpoint, the strengthening of the conventional combat capabilities of a nuclear-armed North Korea cannot be overlooked. The larger the deployment becomes, the faster that improvement is likely to proceed.

North Korea has found it difficult to catch up with ROK-U.S. forces in the quality of conventional capabilities such as advanced air power, precision-strike capabilities, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR). To compensate for an ever-widening military gap, it turned to nuclear weapons the “poor man’s weapon.” Through its deployment to Russia, however, North Korea has accumulated experience in drone, artillery, and missile operations as well as modern ground warfare. As its conventional forces improve, the utility of its nuclear arsenal grows significantly. This is because Pyongyang gains a broader range of military options that can be exercised below the threshold of nuclear use. There is a reason last year’s ROK-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) identified both North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile capabilities and the modernization of its conventional forces through cooperation with Russia as major challenges.

Military experts have long cited North Korea’s chronic economic difficulties and shortages of food and fuel as factors that would limit its ability to sustain a prolonged war. That conventional wisdom is also eroding rapidly. In return for North Korea’s provision of artillery shells and troop deployments, Russia supplies oil, food, and minerals. According to the Bank of Korea, the North Korean economy grew by 3.1 percent in 2023, 3.7 percent in 2024, and 3.5 percent in 2025, recording growth above 3 percent for three consecutive years. The Institute for National Security Strategy estimated that compensation for North Korea’s troop deployments and exports of military supplies amounted to as much as $14.4 billion through the end of last year. At the very least, one of North Korea’s longstanding weaknesses its limited ability to sustain a prolonged war because of shortages of fuel, food, and foreign currency may have been substantially alleviated. This year’s UFS was designed with precisely such an adversary in mind.

With the exercise effectively cut in half, President Lee nevertheless instructed the government to “proceed, as planned and without disruption, with the wartime operational control transition within my term” at the Ulchi Cabinet meeting on August 18. Noting that South Korea’s defense budget is 1.4 times the size of North Korea’s GDP, he also said, “We have more than enough capacity to defend ourselves.” Military experts know that the transition of wartime operational control, or OPCON, is not simply a question of money. The critical issue is whether the ROK military has objectively demonstrated the tangible and intangible capabilities required to command and control ROK-U.S. combined forces in a contingency. Annual combined exercises such as FS in March and UFS in August are key venues for assessing and validating those capabilities. The government says there is no problem, but Trump’s unilateral directive to scale back UFS seriously disrupted that process. Even so, President Lee instructed the military to complete the transition “within his term,” and the following day expressed “respect” for Trump.

4. Pressing for OPCON Transition Despite the Disrupted Exercise Is This Really the Time?

With the war in Iran dragging on and no clear achievements in Ukraine or Gaza, Trump is in urgent need of a diplomatic breakthrough ahead of the midterm elections. He said North Korea possesses “57 very powerful nuclear weapons” and that he intends to meet Kim Jong Un before the end of the year. This is why the possibility of a high-stakes U.S.-North Korea nuclear deal is drawing attention. To be sure, official U.S. policy toward North Korea remains its complete denuclearization. But if Kim Jong Un, who refuses to relinquish his nuclear weapons, and Trump, who wants a visible diplomatic achievement, actually sit down together, no one can say with confidence what might happen.

There is no guarantee that the sidelining of Seoul revealed in the unilateral reduction of UFS will not recur in future North Korean nuclear negotiations. This is why concerns persist over the possibility of a “bad deal” that restricts only intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of threatening the U.S. mainland while tolerating the rest of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal, which threatens South Korea. The U.S. nuclear umbrella and its extended deterrence commitment would not immediately become meaningless, but the existential question “Would the United States sacrifice Los Angeles for Seoul?” would only grow more acute.

The commander-in-chief of the Republic of Korea Armed Forces has a constitutional duty to prevent such an outcome and safeguard the nation’s security. With North Korea’s nuclear and conventional threats rising simultaneously, the government should be cautious about fixing the OPCON transition to a deadline of “within this presidential term.” The reduction of UFS may prove to be a harbinger of a security crisis yet to come. At the very least, this is no time to project composure by expressing “respect” for such a serious development.

Note: The views expressed herein may differ from those of the Hansun Foundation

(※ It's a translation based on machine translation)