Trump announced that the US would halt the “very expensive” annual military exercises with South Korea after his June 12 meeting with Kim Jong Un. He even adopted North Korea’s description of the exercises as “very provocative.” 
 
 The next military exercise with South Korea had been set for next spring, though the status of that operation, codenamed Foal Eagle, is uncertain, since the US had announced shortly after the June 12 summit that all exercises had been canceled indefinitely. On Tuesday, Mattis declined to say whether Foal Eagle or any of the other previously set exercises were being rescheduled, and referred questions to the State Department, which is handling negotiations with North Korea. The State Department did not respond immediately to a request for comment. 
 
 “As you know, we took the step to suspend several of the largest exercises as a good-faith measure coming out of the Singapore summit,” he told reporters at the Pentagon. “We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises.” 
 
 In another sign that the Trump administration’s negotiations with North Korea are faltering, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis on Tuesday said large-scale military exercises with South Korea are back on the table — less than three months after the summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un. 
 
 “It will be a total denuclearization, which is already starting taking place.” —President Trump on June 21 
 
 “Under the circumstances that we’re negotiating ... I think it’s inappropriate to be having war games,” Trump said, in a concession that reportedly blindsided many US allies as well as some in his own military. 
 
 
 
 The Pentagon formally announced that the US had “indefinitely suspended” the long-planned military exercises in South Korea on June 22, including Ulchi Freedom Guardian and two others that were scheduled to take place over the summer. The annual exercises are seen as the focal point of the “ironclad” US–South Korea alliance to defend against North Korean aggression. 
 
 Further decisions would depend on North Korea “continuing to have productive negotiations in good faith,” the Pentagon said at the time. 
 
 Asked on Tuesday whether the decision to resume war game operations suggested that North Korea was “acting in bad faith,” Mattis hedged, countering “not at all, but we did what we did at the time for that purpose.” 
 
 He refused to answer whether turning the military exercises “back on” would be seen as a provocation given the president’s characterization. 
 
 “We're not turning them back (…) on. They've never been turned off,” Mattis said, explaining that only specific exercises had been suspended. “We are going to see how the negotiations go, and then we'll calculate the future, how we go forward.” 
 
 It was not immediately clear what this would mean in practice, and the Pentagon did not respond to BuzzFeed News’ request for further details. 
 
 The US military opening the door to resuming the massive military exercises is the latest in a series of decisions by the Trump administration in recent weeks indicating that little progress has been made since the summit, which the president prematurely touted as a “tremendous success.” 
 
 “It will be a total denuclearization, which is already starting taking place,” Trump said at a cabinet meeting on June 21, adding that it was beginning “immediately” — contradicting Mattis, who was sitting next to him at the same table. 
 
 Last week, just a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a new special representative to take charge of negotiations with Kim’s regime and said they would both be traveling to North Korea, Trump canceled the visit in a tweet. 
 
 “I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo not to go to North Korea, at this time, because I feel we are not making sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula,” the president said in a series of tweets. 
 
 It seemed to be a reversal of Trump’s high-spirited declaration after the summit in June that “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.” 
 
 Asked whether he agreed with the president’s assessment on Tuesday, Mattis did not answer directly. 
 
 “You're asking for a straightforward answer on a complex subject,” he said. “The bottom line is, there was progress made. The whole world saw that progress when the two leaders sat down. We also knew very clearly this was going to be a long and challenging effort to negotiate this away.” 
 
 He deferred all questions on the status of North Korea’s denuclearization to Pompeo, saying the Pentagon was only playing a “supporting role.” ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military has no plans yet to suspend any more major military exercises with South Korea, the defense secretary said on Tuesday, in the middle of a breakdown in diplomacy with North Korea over its nuclear weapons. 
 
 Defense Secretary James Mattis told a Pentagon news conference that no decisions had been made about major exercises for next year but noted that the suspension of drills this summer as a good-faith gesture to North Korea was not open-ended. 
 
 U.S. President Donald Trump’s June decision to unilaterally suspend the drills caught many American military planners off guard and was broadly criticized as a premature concession to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who Trump wants to give up his nuclear weapons. 
 
 “We took the step to suspend several of the largest exercises as a good-faith measure coming out of the Singapore summit,” Mattis told reporters, referring to the June 12 meeting between Trump and Kim. 
 
 “We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises,” he said, adding that no decisions had yet been made on major exercises for next year. 
 
 Mattis also said smaller exercises deemed to be exempt from the suspension were ongoing. 
 
 Mattis’ comments on the drills come at a delicate time for negotiations between the United States and North Korea after Trump scrapped plans for a meeting between top officials from both countries. 
 
 At the June summit, the first meeting between a serving U.S. president and a North Korean leader, Kim agreed in broad terms to work toward denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. But North Korea has given no indication it is willing to give up its weapons unilaterally as the Trump administration has demanded. 
 
 Since then, diplomats have failed to advance the process. 
 
 North Korean officials even warned in a letter to U.S Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week that denuclearization talks risked falling apart, U.S. officials told Reuters. 
 
 In particular, the North wants steps toward a peace treaty. The 1950-1953 Korean War ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, leaving U.S.-led U.N. forces technically still at war with North Korea. 
 
 U.S. officials fear North Korea might turn its attention to cutting a separate deal with South Korea and driving a wedge between the U.S.-South Korea alliance. 
 
 STALEMATE 
 
 A South Korea presidential spokesman acknowledged that talks between Washington and Pyongyang were at a stalemate. 
 
 “With North Korea and the U.S. remaining stalemated, there is an even bigger need for an inter-Korea summit,” Kim Eui-kyeom, a spokesman for the presidential Blue House, told a briefing. 
 
 South Korean President Moon Jae-in said this month his planned third summit with North Korea’s Kim next month would be another step toward the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and an end to the Korean War. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: Amphibious assault vehicles of the South Korean Marine Corps travel during a military exercise as a part of the annual joint military training called Foal Eagle between South Korea and the United States in Pohang, South Korea, April 5, 2018. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji/File Photo 
 
 “Secretary Mattis’ comment appears to be an extension of the previous U.S.-South Korea agreement concerning the postponement of joint drills, and there has been no other agreement,” South Korea’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday. 
 
 Trump abruptly canceled his top diplomat’s planned trip to North Korea on Friday, publicly acknowledging for the first time that his effort to get Pyongyang to denuclearize had stalled since his summit with the North’s leader. 
 
 Trump partly blamed China for the lack of progress with North Korea and suggested that talks with Pyongyang, led so far by Pompeo, could be on hold until after Washington resolved its bitter trade dispute with Beijing. 
 
 North Korea’s state media accused the United States of “double-dealing” and “hatching a criminal plot” on Sunday but did not mention Pompeo’s canceled visit. 
 
 U.S. intelligence and defense officials have repeatedly expressed doubts about North Korea’s willingness to give up its nuclear weapons and they had not expected Pompeo’s trip to yield positive results. 
 
 Mattis declined to comment on the broader diplomatic efforts, deferring to Pompeo’s State Department. 
 
 “We will work very closely, as I said, with the secretary of state and what he needs done we will certainly do to reinforce his effort. But at this time, there is no discussion about further suspensions,” Mattis said. 
 
 The traditional U.S. calendar for other major drills does not pick up again until next spring, officials say, which could give diplomats and military planners time. 
 
 The U.S.-South Korean exercise calendar hits a high point every spring with the Foal Eagle and Max Thunder drills, which take months to plan. 
 
 U.S. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis attends the swearing in ceremony for new Secretary of Veterans Affairs Robert Wilkie in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 30, 2018. REUTERS/Brian Snyder 
 
 One U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said preliminary planning for next year’s drills was already taking place. Still, the official acknowledged that would not be indicative of whether the drills will go forward. 
 
 Max Thunder’s air combat exercises so unnerved North Korea this year that it issued threatening statements that nearly scuttled the June summit between Trump and Kim. 
 
 Foal Eagle is designed to simulate war scenarios and involves ground, air, naval and special operations forces. ||||| There are no future plans to halt joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises in the Korean Peninsula, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said Tuesday. This is a departure from the announcement in June that he had "indefinitely suspended" military exercises with South Korea after President Trump said at his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that the U.S. would stop its "war games" with South Korea. 
 
 Facing a standstill in diplomatic efforts with the North Koreans, this is the latest indication that the Trump administration is not willing to give concessions to Kim without tangible steps on denuclearization. 
 
 "We have no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises," Mattis told reporters Tuesday. 
 
 As a result of the president's decision, the U.S.-South Korea August exercise, Freedom Guardian, did not take place. On Wednesday Mattis put out a statement clarifying that the US military posture had not changed since the Singapore summit. But what appears to have changed is the appetite from the US to massage relations with North Korea – sometimes using military tools – to draw them into negotiations. Mr. Trump himself indicated in June that the stoppage was an overture from the U.S. to keep the North Koreans at the negotiating table as the two sides worked together productively. 
 
 "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 June, at the Singapore summit. "But we'll be saving a tremendous amount of money. Plus, I think it's very provocative." 
 
 Mattis explained that the exercise had been halted in good faith, to grease the wheels for U.S.-North Korea negotiations. He reiterated that sentiment on Tuesday and left open the possibility that future exercises could be halted if it would enable negotiations. 
 
 "I do not have a crystal ball right, now. Let's see how the negotiations go," Mattis said. "Let's let the diplomats go forward. We all know the gravity of the issue they are dealing with, and we will deal with supporting the diplomats as I have said repeatedly." 
 
 The United States has about 28,500 troops in South Korea. Mattis avoided characterizing future U.S.-South Korean exercises as provocative or not. 
 
 The resumption of regular U.S.-South Korea military exercises may be one of a few signs that the Trump administration is growing impatient about having made the concession while North Korea wins itself time and space. 
 
 On the same day as Mattis' announcement, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley said that "it's possible" that North Korea is rethinking its promise to denuclearize the Korean peninsula. 
 
 "Are [the North Koreans] wishing or maybe changing their minds on denuclearization? It's possible," Haley said at an event at the Foundation for Defending Democracy, adding, "but we're not changing our minds on the sanctions. We're not changing our mind on the denuclearization." 
 
 She also said, however, that the good news is that there has been no missile testing in months and there is a dialogue between the world and North Korea. 
 
 Last week, Mr. Trump declared that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo would be cancelling his trip to North Korea. The visit, which would have been Pompeo's fourth time travelling to North Korea this year, had only just been announced a day before it was cancelled. The State Department said that there had been progress in the U.S.-North Korea talks broadly because there were ongoing discussions. But Mr. Trump insisted in a tweet that there had not been "sufficient progress with respect to the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." 
 
 Earlier in June, after meeting with top North Korean negotiator Kim Yong Chol, Mr. Trump said that the U.S. was holding off on "hundreds" of sanctions while talks were going "nicely." 
 
 "We have very significant sanctions on right now but we have hundreds that are ready to go. But i said I'm not going to put -- why would I do that when we're talking so nicely?" Trump said. 
 
 In August the U.S. rolled out three rounds of sanctions targeting North Korea. The administration says that additional sanctions are likely, as the administration shifts back towards a harsher North Korea stance. 
 
 Plans to continue U.S.-South Korean games, implement additional sanctions, and interrupt talks all come as the U.S. has yet to cite any progress from North Korea on efforts to denuclearize. 
 
 Even progress in other realms, like efforts to build trust between the two parties, has been slow. North Korea did return remains said to be of American prisoners of the Korean War. Department of Defense officials, however, said it could take years to verify that the bodies are actually Americans. They also described the remains as being in moderate-to-poor condition. 
 
 Eleanor Watson contributed to this report.
– The war games may be back on. Just two months after President Trump announced he had "indefinitely suspended" the "very provocative" military drills by the US and South Korea in a move meant to soothe North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Tuesday there are "no plans at this time to suspend any more exercises," per BuzzFeed. Reuters reports the comments come in the midst of a "breakdown in diplomacy" with North Korea over denuclearization, though Mattis denied any act of bad faith on North Korea's part. Referring to the decision "to suspend several of the largest exercises as a good-faith measure coming out of the Singapore summit," Mattis said "we did what we did at the time for that purpose." He added there's been no decision on the next large-scale military exercise, previously set for next spring. UN Ambassador Nikki Haley was more pointed in her remarks on North Korea Tuesday. "Are [the North Koreans] wishing or maybe changing their minds on denuclearization? It's possible … but we're not changing our minds," she said, per CBS News.