President Trump’s pledge Tuesday to suspend joint U.S. military exercises with South Korea will be a welcome concession to North Korea, which has frequently complained that the drills are a preparation for war.

But halting the annual exercises would not represent a major sacrifice for the United States, which has suspended the military drills before in an effort to lessen tensions on the peninsula. They can be restarted quickly.

Most recently the Pentagon agreed to delay planned military exercises during the Olympics, which were held in South Korea, after the North agreed to participate. The exercises were held after the Winter Games ended.

The exercises were also suspended between 1994 and 1996 in an attempt to improve conditions during diplomatic talks with North Korea. The diplomatic efforts ultimately failed and the exercises resumed.

President Trump said he would halt the annual exercises during a press conference after his summit with Kim Jong Un. He termed the exercises “provocative.”

"This would be a substantial concession to North Korea’s security concerns," said Alison Evans, an analyst at IHS Markit, a firm that tracks security issues.

The military exercises, which often involve ships, aircraft and thousands of troops have been conducted for decades on the Korean peninsula.

The Pentagon has said they are critical to maintain the readiness of U.S. and South Korean forces, which could be called on to defend against an attack from North Korea, which has an active duty force of one million troops and thousands of artillery pieces and rocket launchers aimed at the South.

In a press conference after the summit Trump suggested suspending the exercises would be a cost-saving measure.

It's not clear how South Korea will react to the suspension. South Korea's president, Moon Jae-in, has been pushing the United States and North Korea to reconcile their differences and would likely support the offer.

But Moon's opponents consider U.S. military support as critical to the defense of South Korea. The United States has more than 25,000 troops based in South Korea.

Trump said he would like the troops to "come home," but there were no plans to do so now.

In a statement the Pentagon suggested there was no change in guidance yet from the White House.

The statement said the Defense Department would continue to work with the White House, other agencies and “our allies and partners on the way forward” following the summit.

The statement said the Defense Department would provide more “information as it becomes available.”</s>President Trump’s pledge Tuesday to suspend joint U.S. military exercises with South Korea will be a welcome concession to North Korea, which has frequently complained that the drills are a preparation for war.

But halting the annual exercises would not represent a major sacrifice for the United States, which has suspended the military drills before in an effort to lessen tensions on the peninsula. They can be restarted quickly.

Most recently the Pentagon agreed to delay planned military exercises during the Olympics, which were held in South Korea, after the North agreed to participate. The exercises were held after the Winter Games ended.

The exercises were also suspended between 1994 and 1996 in an attempt to improve conditions during diplomatic talks with North Korea. The diplomatic efforts ultimately failed and the exercises resumed.

President Trump said he would halt the annual exercises during a press conference after his summit with Kim Jong Un. He termed the exercises “provocative.”

"This would be a substantial concession to North Korea’s security concerns," said Alison Evans, an analyst at IHS Markit, a firm that tracks security issues.

The military exercises, which often involve ships, aircraft and thousands of troops have been conducted for decades on the Korean peninsula.

The Pentagon has said they are critical to maintain the readiness of U.S. and South Korean forces, which could be called on to defend against an attack from North Korea, which has an active duty force of one million troops and thousands of artillery pieces and rocket launchers aimed at the South.

In a press conference after the summit Trump suggested suspending the exercises would be a cost-saving measure.

It's not clear how South Korea will react to the suspension. South Korea's president, Moon Jae-in, has been pushing the United States and North Korea to reconcile their differences and would likely support the offer.

But Moon's opponents consider U.S. military support as critical to the defense of South Korea. The United States has more than 25,000 troops based in South Korea.

Trump said he would like the troops to "come home," but there were no plans to do so now.

In a statement the Pentagon said it would continue to work with the White House, other agencies and “our allies and partners on the way forward” following the summit. The statement said the Defense Department would provide more “information as it becomes available.”</s>President Trump says America will stop cooperative war games with South Korea. It’s a move that’s meant to ease tensions with North Korea after Trump’s summit with its leader, Kim Jong Un. Trump says Kim has committed to giving up North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. He added that the wargames are expensive and provocative. Trump remarked that there’s no plan right now to remove the more than 30-thousand U.S. troops stationed in South Korea.</s>After a historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in Seoul to meet with South Korean President Moon Jae-in. They will discuss President Trump's decision to halt what he called "war games," or joint military exercises. That move surprised Seoul, along with top Pentagon officials and members of Congress.

It's a decision that could turn on a dime, however, according to CBS News military and homeland security analyst Sandy Winnefeld, a retired Navy admiral and former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Winnefeld said the important question in negotiations is: "Are we going to trade reversible for reversible, and irreversible for irreversible, or are we going to try to get the better side of that?"

"And in this case, it's a big deal to trade something like this, but it's also very reversible. You could snap your fingers and do an exercise tomorrow if [Defense Secretary] Jim Mattis says so," Winnefeld said Wednesday on "CBS This Morning."

"The first one obviously is deterrence. They've worked very well for decades in deterring North Korea from attacking the South," Winnefeld said. "As part of that, the second thing is that they allow two nations, militaries, that come from different cultures, speak different languages, to prepare for combat together in this 'katchi-kapshida,' which means, 'we go together' mode in potential high intensity combat environment that can happen on short notice in a very short space. They're very important." 



But Winnefeld said he's "cautiously optimistic" about the first meeting between Mr. Trump and Kim.

"I think this was a pretty good start to a good future. The question now is what comes next? This was easy compared to what comes next in terms of the very, very difficult negotiations in terms of dismantling this capability in a phased process. It's going to have to be phased," Winnefeld said. "We're going to have to very carefully, again, trade reversible for reversible and not fall into the same trap we might have fallen into in the past."

While Mr. Trump tweeted Wednesday that North Korea is "no longer a Nuclear Threat [sic]," Winnefeld said "the capability is still there and everybody knows it."

"Perhaps the intent on North Korea's part to use these weapons has been modulated a little bit by this particular event that's just happened, but as a military person, you always take capability in mind, and that's what this negotiation is going to be all about, dismantling that capability," Winnefeld said. 



Mr. Trump also told reporters on Tuesday he wants to bring American soldiers in the Korean Peninsula back home "at some point," but Winnefeld pointed to China's desire to diminish U.S. influence in the region.

"It would be wise to keep [U.S.] presence there as a counterbalance to some other players in the region who might be problematic," Winnefeld said.</s>SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean state media lauded on Wednesday the summit between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump as a resounding success, highlighting concessions by the U.S. president and the prospect of a new era of peace and prosperity on the Korean peninsula.

According to a report by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Trump expressed his intention to halt U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises, offer security guarantees to the North and lift sanctions against it as relations improve.

The U.S. president had said in a news conference on Tuesday he would like to lift sanctions against North Korea but it would not happen immediately.

Kim and Trump invited each other to their respective countries and both leaders "gladly accepted", KCNA reported.

The summit, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, was in stark contrast to a flurry of North Korean nuclear and missile tests and angry exchanges of insults between Trump and Kim last year that fueled worries about war.

"Kim Jong Un and Trump had the shared recognition to the effect that it is important to abide by the principle of step-by-step and simultaneous action in achieving peace, stability and denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," KCNA said.

Trump confirmed the United States will not hold war games with South Korea while North Korea negotiates in good faith on denuclearization.

"We're not going to be doing the war games as long as we're negotiating in good faith," Trump told Fox News Channel in an interview in Singapore after the summit.

"So that's good for a number of reasons, in addition to which we save a tremendous amount of money," Trump said. "You know, those things, they cost. I hate to appear a businessman, but I kept saying, what's it costing?"

U.S. Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Trump's cost reasoning for halting the exercises was "ridiculous".

"It's not a burden onto the American taxpayer to have a forward deployed force in South Korea," Graham told CNN. "It brings stability. It's a warning to China that you can't just take over the whole region. So I reject that analysis that it costs too much, but I do accept the proposition, let's stand down (on military exercises) and see if we can find a better way here."

There was some confusion over precisely what military cooperation with South Korea Trump had promised to halt.

The U.S.-South Korean exercise calendar hits a high point every year with the Foal Eagle and Max Thunder drills, which both wrapped up last month. Another major drill is due in August.

The United States maintains around 28,500 soldiers in South Korea, which remains in a technical state of war with the North after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.

Trump's announcement was a surprise even to President Moon Jae-in's government in Seoul, which worked in recent months to help bring about the Trump-Kim summit.

Asked about Trump's comments regarding the halting of drills, South Korean presidential spokesman Kim Eui-kyeom told reporters there was a need to seek measures that would help improve engagement with North Korea but it was also necessary to confirm exactly what Trump had meant.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in will be chairing a national security meeting early on Thursday to discuss the outcome of Tuesday's summit.

Trump's administration had previously ruled out any concessions or lifting of sanctions without North Korea's commitment to complete, verifiable and irreversible steps to scrap a nuclear arsenal that is advanced enough to threaten the United States.

Critics in the United States said Trump had given away too much at a meeting that gave Kim international standing. The North Korean leader had been isolated, his country accused by rights groups of widespread human rights abuses and under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

"For North Korea, they got exactly what they wanted," said Moon Seong-mook, a former South Korean military official and current head of the Unification Strategy Center in Seoul. "They had a summit as a nuclear state with Kim on equal turf with Trump, got the United States to halt joint military exercises with South Korea. It's a win for Kim Jong Un."

Officials from South Korea and Japan were expected to discuss the issue when U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrives in Seoul later on Wednesday. He is scheduled to meet South Korean President Moon Jae-in early on Thursday and then hold a trilateral meeting with Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono.

Japan's Minister of Defence Itsunori Onodera said that, while North Korea had pledged denuclearization, no concrete steps had been taken and Japan would not let down its guard.

"We see U.S. South Korean joint exercises and the U.S. military presence in South Korea as vital to security in East Asia," Onodera told reporters. "It is up to the U.S. and South Korea to decide about their joint exercises. We have no intention of changing our joint drills with the U.S."

Japan, along with China, is expected to bear much of the initial costs of North Korea's denuclearization but would only start shouldering costs after the International Atomic Energy Agency restarts inspections, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters.

The Singapore summit did not get top billing in the main state news outlets in China, North Korea's main ally.

The ruling Communist Party's main newspaper, the People's Daily, reported the news in a brief page 3 article about the Chinese Foreign Ministry's reaction to the talks.

The English-language China Daily said in an editorial that, while it remained to be seen if the talks would be a defining moment in history, the fact that the talks went smoothly was a positive result.

"While no one should expect the summit to have ironed out all the differences and erased the deep-seated mistrust between the two long-time foes, it has ignited hopes that they will be finally able to put an end to their hostility and that the long-standing peninsula issues can finally be resolved. These hopes should not be extinguished," it said.</s>The Latest on the summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and President Donald Trump in Singapore (all times local):

President Donald Trump says he will be ending joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea.

Trump made the announcement Tuesday at a news conference in Singapore after his historic meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un.

North Korea has long objected to the annual exercises, viewing them as practice for future military action against the North by the United States.

Trump cast his decision as a financial consideration, saying the U.S. will save a lot of money by canceling the drills.

President Donald Trump is thanking North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "for taking the first bold step toward a bright new future for his people" after the leaders' historic Singapore summit.

Trump said at a news conference Tuesday after meeting face to face with Kim that "real change is indeed possible."

He also says that he's prepared "to start a new history" and "write a new chapter" between the two nations.

He says, "The past does not have to define the future."

President Donald Trump says he gave North Korean leader Kim Jong Un a video that laid out the opportunities of their historic meeting.

Reporters were shown the video before the start of Trump's news conference Tuesday. The video resembled a preview of a film. It shows images of warplanes and artillery and says there can "only be two results," one of moving back or moving forward.

The video shows the two leaders and raises the questions: "What if history can be changed? Will the world embrace this change?"

The president says he gave the video "to Chairman Kim and his people."

President Donald Trump is finally revealing that he spoke directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ahead of their Singapore summit.

Trump said in an interview Tuesday with ABC's George Stephanopoulos that he'd spoken with Kim and others before the summit.

Trump had dodged the question for weeks, refusing to answer reporters who asked about their contact.

During a visit to Mar-a-Lago in April, Trump told a reporter that he had spoken with Kim personally, but an aide quickly walked back the statement, saying it was other officials who'd spoken with Kim.

It was later revealed that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had traveled to Pyongyang to meet with Kim.

Trump is describing his day with Kim as "very intense." He says he believes Kim wants to get denuclearization "done" and says he trusts Kim.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has spoken with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts after President Donald Trump's summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Pompeo tweeted shortly after the summit ended Tuesday that he'd telephoned South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha and Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Kono. The State Department released a photograph of Pompeo on the phone.

Pompeo says on Twitter he provided the diplomats with "a brief readout of today's meeting" between Trump and Kim. The two leaders concluded their summit by signing a document in which Trump pledged "security guarantees" to the North and Kim reiterated his commitment to "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

The State Department is declining to release any additional information about the calls.

President Donald Trump and North Korea's Kim Jong Un have concluded an extraordinary nuclear summit by signing a document in which Trump pledged "security guarantees" to the North and Kim reiterated his commitment to "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."

Light on specifics, the document largely amounted to an agreement to continue discussions as it reiterated previous public statements and past commitments. It did not include an agreement to take steps toward ending the technical state of warfare between the U.S. and North Korea.

The pair promised in the document to "build a lasting and stable peace regime" on the Korean Peninsula and to repatriate remains of prisoners of war and those missing in action during the Korean War.</s>
• President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that the US and South Korea would stop joint military drills after meeting Kim Jong Un.
• But the Pentagon and South Korea haven’t heard anything about it, even though China apparently has.
• US military forces in Korea have not received any direction to cease joint military drills, a spokesman said on Tuesday.
• The US has long resisted calls to suspend military drills, even when offered a freeze in North Korean missile and nuclear testing in return.
• It traditionally asserted that bilateral, planned, and transparent military drills are legal while North Korea’s nuclear program is not.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday after meeting with Kim Jong Un that the US and South Korea would stop military drills – but it appears China knew about it before the Pentagon did.

US military forces in Korea have not received any direction to cease joint military drills, a spokesman said on Tuesday, Reuters notes.

The South Korean military issued a statement to NBC News saying: “Regarding President Trump’s comment regarding ending of the combined military drills..We need to find out the exact meaning or intention behind his comments at this point.”

Meanwhile, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said “Our suspension for suspension process is right and has been realised,” a BBC correspondent in China reported.

The US has long resisted calls from North Korea and China for a “suspension for suspension,” whereby the US would stop military drills in exchange for a freeze in North Korean missile and nuclear testing.

Historically, the US has asserted that the bilateral, planned, and transparent military drills are legal while North Korea’s nuclear program is not, so it would be blackmail to suspend them for Pyongyang.

“USFK has received no updated guidance on execution or cessation of training exercises – to include this fall’s schedule Ulchi Freedom Guardian,” US Forces in Korea Lt. Col. Jennifer Lovett said in a statement seen by Reuters.

“In coordination with our ROK partners, we will continue with our current military posture until we receive updated guidance from the Department of Defense (DoD) and/or Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM).”

This is not the first time an announcement from Trump has caught the military off-guard. When Trump tweeted that transgender US citizens wouldn’t be allowed to serve in the military, the Pentagon also had received no guidance.</s>SINGAPORE (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump made a stunning concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un on Tuesday about halting military exercises, pulling a surprise at a summit that baffled allies, military officials and lawmakers from his own Republican Party.

At a news conference after the historic meeting with Kim in Singapore, Trump announced he would halt what he called "very provocative" and expensive regular military exercises that the United States stages with South Korea.

That was sure to rattle close allies South Korea and Japan. North Korea has long sought an end to the war games.

Trump and Kim promised in a joint statement to work towards the "denuclearisation" of the Korean Peninsula, and the United States promised its Cold War foe security guarantees. But they offered few specifics.

The summit, the first between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, was in stark contrast to a flurry of North Korean nuclear and missile tests and angry exchanges of insults between Trump and Kim last year that fuelled worries about war.

Highlighting the change in tone, North Korea's state-run news agency reported early on Wednesday that Kim and Trump had accepted invitations to visit each other's countries. No dates were disclosed.

Noting past North Korean promises to denuclearize, many analysts cast doubt on how effective Trump had been at obtaining Washington's pre-summit goal of getting North Korea to undertake complete, verifiable and irreversible steps to scrap a nuclear arsenal that is advanced enough to threaten the United States.

Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported that Trump offered to lift economic sanctions on North Korea.

Trump "expressed his intention to halt the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises, which the DPRK side regards as provocation, over a period of good-will dialogue between the DPRK and the U.S., offer security guarantees to the DPRK and lift sanctions against it along with advance in improving the mutual relationship through dialogue and negotiation," it said.

North Korea's formal name is the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

While suggesting Pyongyang would take mutual goodwill measures, KCNA made no mention of abandoning the country's nuclear programme.

Critics in the United States said Trump had given away too much at a meeting that provided international standing to Kim. The North Korean leader had been isolated, his country accused by rights groups of widespread human rights abuses and under U.N. sanctions for its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

If implemented, the halting of the joint military exercises would be one of the most controversial moves to come from the summit. The drills help keep U.S. forces at a state of readiness in one of the world's most tense flashpoints.

"We will be stopping the war games which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should. But we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money, plus I think it's very provocative," Trump said.

His announcement was a surprise even to President Moon Jae-in's government in Seoul, which worked in recent months to help bring about the Trump-Kim summit.

The presidential Blue House said it needed "to find out the precise meaning or intentions" of Trump's statement, while adding it was willing to "explore various measures to help the talks move forward more smoothly."

There was some confusion over precisely what military cooperation with South Korea that Trump had promised to halt.

U.S. Senator Cory Gardner told reporters that Vice President Mike Pence promised in a briefing for Republican senators that the Trump administration would "clarify what the president talked about" regarding joint military exercises.

"VP was very clear: regular readiness training and training exchanges will continue ... war games will not," Gardner later wrote on Twitter.

Pentagon officials were not immediately able to provide any details about Trump’s remarks about suspending drills, a step the U.S. military has long resisted.

One South Korean official said he initially thought Trump had misspoken.

"I was shocked when he called the exercises 'provocative,' a very unlikely word to be used by a U.S. president," the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Current and former U.S. defence officials expressed concern at the possibility the United States would unilaterally halt military exercises without an explicit concession from North Korea that lowers the threat from Pyongyang.

The U.S.-South Korean exercise calendar hits a high point every year with the Foal Eagle and Max Thunder drills, which both wrapped up last month.

U.S. military drills have been dialled back previously to encourage Pyongyang to cooperate. U.S. President George H.W. Bush agreed to cancel the huge "Team Spirit" joint military drills in 1992 in hopes the North would implement inspections agreements. The drills were eventually phased out.

In a Twitter post as he returned from Singapore, Trump hailed his "truly amazing visit" and insisted that "Great progress was made on the denuclearisation of North Korea."

Later, he tweeted: "There is no limit to what NoKo can achieve when it gives up its nuclear weapons and embraces commerce & engagement w/ the world."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who said Trump called him from Air Force One, praised the president's leadership at the summit.

"The President has given Kim Jong Un a way out that is good for him and the world. I hope Kim is smart enough to take it. Well done, Mr. President," Graham said on Twitter.

But concerns persisted about the vague nature of the public agreements.

The Republican chairman of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Bob Corker, said in a statement: "While I am glad the president and Kim Jong Un were able to meet, it is difficult to determine what of concrete nature has occurred."

World stock markets were little changed on Tuesday, while the U.S. dollar rose slightly against an index of major currencies, as investors brushed aside the summit.

The two leaders smiled and shook hands at their meeting at the Capella hotel on Singapore's resort island of Sentosa, and Trump spoke in warm terms of Kim at his news conference.

Just a few months ago, Kim was an international pariah accused of ordering the killing of his uncle, a half-brother and hundreds of officials suspected of disloyalty. Tens of thousands of North Koreans are imprisoned in labour camps.

The leaders' joint statement did not refer to human rights. Trump said he had raised the issue with Kim, and he believed the North Korean leader wanted to "do the right thing."

Trump said he expected the denuclearisation process to start "very, very quickly" and it would be verified by "having a lot of people in North Korea.".

He said Kim had announced that North Korea was destroying a major missile engine-testing site, but sanctions on North Korea would stay in place for now.

It was unclear if negotiations would lead to denuclearisation, or end with broken promises, as happened in the past, said Anthony Ruggiero, senior fellow at Washington's Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

But Victor Cha, who handled North Korea policy under former President George W. Bush, praised Trump's unorthodox diplomacy and willingness to engage Kim directly.

"Despite its many flaws, the Singapore summit represents the start of a diplomatic process that takes us away from the brink of war," Cha wrote in the New York Times.

The leaders' joint statement said Trump "committed to provide security guarantees" to North Korea and Kim "reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula".

North Korea has long rejected unilateral nuclear disarmament, instead referring to the denuclearisation of the peninsula. That has always been interpreted as a call for the United States to remove its "nuclear umbrella" protecting South Korea and Japan.

The joint statement made no mention of the sanctions on North Korea and there was no reference to formally ending the 1950-53 Korean War, which killed millions of people and ended in a truce.

But it said the two sides had agreed to recover the remains of prisoners of war and soldiers missing in action, so they could be repatriated. The Pentagon said on Tuesday that nearly 7,700 U.S. military personnel are unaccounted for from the Korean War.

Trump said China, North Korea's main ally, would welcome the progress he and Kim had made.

The Singapore summit did not get top billing in Chinese newspapers on Wednesday. The ruling Communist Party's main newspaper, the People's Daily, reported the news in a brief page 3 article about the Chinese Foreign Ministry's reaction to the talks.

The English-language China Daily said in an editorial that while it remained to be seen if the talks would be a defining moment in history, the fact that the talks went smoothly was a "positive result".

"While no one should expect the summit to have ironed out all the differences and erased the deep-seated mistrust between the two long-time foes, it has ignited hopes that they will be finally able to put an end to their hostility and that the long-standing peninsula issues can finally be resolved. These hopes should not be extinguished," it said.

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.</s>Washington (CNN) President Donald Trump's announcement that the US will stop military exercises with South Korea startled Tokyo and Seoul, unsettled US lawmakers, and took at least some parts of the Pentagon by surprise.

The declaration -- one that goes to the heart of the security of US allies and the United States' western defense perimeter -- raised concerns that Trump had made a significant concession at his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un without getting anything solid in return, particularly as he raised the prospect of pulling troops out of South Korea altogether.

"It's really breathtaking," said Michael J. Green, senior vice president for Asia and Japan chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"When the President of the United States announces unilaterally to the leader of North Korea that we are going to stop our military exercises with our allies, Japan and Korea, and does not first tell those allies ... and then goes on to say that someday he'd like to get our troops out of Asia," Green said, "that's an astonishing development."

Others said that in giving away a significant chip so early in the game, Trump was undermining his negotiators' leverage.

And while North Korea has made a show of scaling back some of its nuclear activities, Pyongyang continues its disruptive behavior in the cyber realm and remains one of the world's most egregious human rights violators, starving its own people.

Trump made the announcement in the course of a press conference in Singapore. "It's inappropriate to be having war games," he said, calling them "provocative," an adjective North Korea might use, and adding that "it really is something that I think they very much appreciate."

"We have, right now, 32,000 soldiers in South Korea, and I'd like to be able to bring them back home," Trump said, adding that such a move isn't part of the equation right now.

Former Vice President Joe Biden echoed much of the criticism when he issued a statement saying that "the Trump administration has given the North Korean regime many sought-after wins up front without getting anything in return."

Biden listed the "legitimacy of a meeting with the American president," the easing of the international sanctions pressure "and the suspension of our military readiness exercises," saying the move has "reduced our leverage and signaled a weakening of our alliance in return for vague promises to begin nuclear negotiations."

Green, the Asia expert at CSIS, said it was possible that the Pentagon could amend the President's statement and say, "what the President meant was we're not going to have heavy bombers in our exercises, or we're not going to escalate them because we're under a diplomatic process right now... But we've not had a president talk about pulling the troops home in over half a century."

A former State Department official characterized the announcement as "a step that can be easily reversed."

"It's not a positive sign, but (it's) also not a fatal flaw," said Thomas Countryman, a former assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation, who added that he was concerned about the lack of coordination with South Korea.

"The entire process can only succeed if the United States and South Korea stay in the closest possible consultation," Countryman said during a call organized by the Arms Control Association.

South Korea's Ministry of Defense put out a statement after Trump's press conference saying it needed "to figure out President Trump's accurate meaning and intention."

There was also some question as to whether the US military was completely aware of Trump's decision. Several lawmakers, including Sen. Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, said military leaders were in the dark.

One US defense official told CNN that they had "received no updated guidance on execution or cessation of training exercises," including the next big one in late August, called Ulchi Freedom Guardian, and would continue their current coordination and work with South Korea until told otherwise.

But Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said Secretary of Defense James Mattis "was not surprised. He was consulted."

She noted that "conversations have been robust," and while she didn't say that Mattis supported the President's decision on exercises, she said that Mattis "is in full alignment with the President to meet his goal, which is denuclearization of the Peninsula."

A second senior US defense official said the Pentagon will now work with the White House and State Department to determine how to carry out the President's intent on exercises.

The official said the issues to be determined right now include: whether this is a temporary or permanent suspension; the level of exercises impacted -- all of them or just major ones; the impact on allies who are part of the program and whether there are any conditions North Korea must meet before exercises are called off.

Korea experts say the exercises are crucial.

"We need to have a high state of readiness to deter North Korea or, god forbid, defend South Korea," Gordon Chang, a North Korea expert, told CNN. "If you don't have those exercises, readiness erodes very quickly, working together, getting that interoperability correct."

In addition, Chang added, "That's our western defense perimeter... we need to have it strong, we need to have it whole."

Sen. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, later tweeted that Pence said "while this readiness training and exchanges will occur, war games will not."

The announcement had already generated enough concern that lawmakers from both sides of the aisle were already talking Tuesday about steps they could take to prevent the administration from making changes to US military capability on the Korean peninsula.

"We certainly are involved in terms of the funding of our military capability in the Korean peninsula and the area," Democratic Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego, a veteran who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, told CNN. "Any efforts that we feel in terms of changing troop levels would certainly be our purview and we would look at it very, very closely to make sure that whatever is done is in the best interest of the United States and our allies."

Sen. Roy Blunt of Missouri, a member of Senate GOP leadership, said, "I'd be concerned about any discussion of removing troops from Korea. And I will look closely at what the discussion was about our joint operations -- our joint military operations."

Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa was definitive when asked about the idea of moving American troops off of the Korean Peninsula. "No," she said. "No moving them."

Gardner said, "I think it's important that we continue to engage in South Korea as we have been, from an exercise standpoint."

At least one Republican said it would be all right to stop military exercises. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said he was "fine" putting war games on hold, but drew the line at troop withdrawal. "One thing I cannot entertain is withdrawing our troops as part of the deal," he said.</s>Washington: President Donald Trump's abrupt announcement that he will suspend US military drills in South Korea appeared to catch the Pentagon and the Seoul government flat-footed, and it contradicted a pillar of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis' campaign to make US troops more combat-ready.

During a news conference following his summit on Tuesday with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, Trump pushed his unconventional approach even further by calling annual the US-South Korean military exercises "provocative." He also said he'd like to remove all 28,500 US troops stationed in the South, although he made clear this was an option for the future, not a part of current negotiations.

The US has stationed combat troops in South Korea since the end of the 1950-53 war and has used them in a variety of large-scale drills designed to sharpen skills and test troops' ability to operate effectively with their South Korean partners.

The next scheduled major exercise, known as Ulchi Freedom Guardian and involving tens of thousands of troops, normally is held in August.

"We will be stopping the war games, which will save us a tremendous amount of money, unless and until we see the future negotiation is not going along like it should," Trump said in Singapore. "But we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it's very provocative." In a later interview with the Voice of America, Trump said the North Koreans were "very happy" about his decision to freeze the exercises "because it is so provocative."

In the wake of Trump's unexpected, almost offhand comments to reporters, the Pentagon had nothing to say about the future of the war games. Several hours after Trump's remarks, the Pentagon put out a brief statement welcoming "positive news" from Singapore, but it remained silent on whether Ulchi Freedom Guardian will proceed. Mattis' chief spokeswoman, Dana W White, told reporters he was "in full alignment" with Trump and had been consulted in advance on all aspects of the Singapore talks.

"There were no surprises," she said.

If Mattis was aware that Trump was going to announce a suspension of military exercises, he apparently did not share that information with the South Koreans or with the military organisation most directly affected: US Forces Korea.

That US command said it had "received no updated guidance on the execution or cessation of training exercises."

The South Korean government also appeared caught off guard. Seoul's presidential office told The Associated Press that it was trying to parse Trump's comments. The South Korean military seemed similarly surprised.

"At this current point, there is a need to discern the exact meaning and intent of President Trump's comments," Seoul's Defense Ministry said, adding that there have been no discussions yet with Washington on modifying drills set for August.

A degree of confusion arose after Vice-President Mike Pence spoke to senators at a lunch closed to media coverage. Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, said Pence indicated that "exercises will continue," although Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, said this referred to routine, daily training in South Korea, not the large-scale war games that Trump said are suspended.

Trump's remarks contradicted decades of assertions by the US administrations that military exercises in South Korea are defensive and essential to ensuring that allied forces are ready at a moment's notice to fight the North. A favoured US slogan in South Korea is "ready to fight tonight."

Mattis often says his number one priority as Pentagon chief is to improve what he calls the "lethality" of the military, which includes making troops better equipped, trained and prepared for a full range of combat. In his view, preparedness equates to more effective deterrence – persuading potential adversaries they cannot win and thus should not attack.

Trump's statement was portrayed by critics as an unreciprocated concession.

"Stopping the joint exercises has been a long-term goal for North Korea and China," two Asia analysts, Victor Cha and Sue Mi Terry, wrote in a summit assessment for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Trump delivered it while getting nothing in return beyond the same generalities that North Korea has been offering since the early 1990s."

Even some Republicans in Congress seemed uneasy about this. Republican Ed Royce of California, who is chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, applauded Trump for pursuing peace through diplomacy, but he also said Kim had "gained much" Tuesday, "including an apparent promise" from Trump to suspend military drills.

Trump also seemed annoyed that US bomber aircraft make six-plus hour flights from the Pacific island of Guam to the Korean peninsula as part of its exercise routine.

"Six and a half hours — that's a long time for these big massive planes to be flying to South Korea to practice and then drop bombs all over the place, and then go back to Guam," Trump said. "I know a lot about airplanes; it's very expensive."

North Korea regularly calls the military exercises provocative preparations for a northward invasion, and many of the scariest standoffs in recent years on the Korean Peninsula have happened when the drills were being staged.

Moon Seong Mook, a former South Korean military official, said Trump's comments on the drills confirmed what many in South Korea had feared all along — that North Korea would attempt to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul and gain substantial concessions from an unconventional US president who thinks much less of the traditional alliance than his predecessors.

"The American military presence in South Korea wouldn't mean much if the militaries don't practice through joint drills," said Moon, now a senior analyst for the Seoul-based Korea Research Institute for National Strategy.
After the summit, President Trump says that the U.S. will halt joint military exercises with South Korea.