originally<\/a> been scheduled to conclude on August 27.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSouth Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said the allies were moving to cancel the \u200bsecond phase of the exercise, South Korean media reported. That phase had been expected to involve counterattack operations \u2060following an initial defensive phase, media said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the suggestion of the United States, the countries agreed to make partial adjustments to the duration \u200band scope of the drills, the JCS said. Some combined field manoeuvre training would also be scaled back, although details were still being \u200bdiscussed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A U.S. Department of Defense official said the department had substantially reduced the exercise and associated live-training events, with some cancelled or converted to simulations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The changes would preserve essential readiness and training objectives, with no degradation to U.S. training objectives, the official said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The announcement follows Trump’s order on Sunday to “substantially reduce” U.S. participation in the annual \u200bexercise, citing his “very good relationship” with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(Reuters) SEOUL, Aug 19- South Korea and the U.S. will cut the \u200cduration of their annual joint military drills to five days from 11 and scale back some field training, the allies said on Wednesday, after President Donald Trump ordered a substantial\u00a0reduction\u00a0in U.S. participation. The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise, which began on August 17, will now run through August 21, South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff and a Pentagon official said. \u200bThe exercise had originally been scheduled to conclude on August 27. South Korean Defence Minister Ahn Gyu-back said the allies were moving to cancel the \u200bsecond phase of the exercise, South… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":60611,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-in-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60610"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60610\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60612,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60610\/revisions\/60612"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/60611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gyalchisarshog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}