North Korea warns US drills risk talks Trump restarted

Bloomberg

North Korea warned that upcoming US-South Korea military drills could jeopardise new talks, saying that President Donald Trump pledged to suspend such exercises during his last meeting with Kim Jong-un.
A spokesman for North Korea’s foreign ministry told state media on Tuesday that regime was monitoring the so-called Alliance 19-2 exercises planned for next month in South Korea. The new drills — scaled back from a larger annual training exercise suspended by Trump last year — might affect working-level talks that were expected to resume in the coming days.
“We will watch US moves and make a decision regarding holding working-level talks with the US,” the spokesman, who was not identified, told the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
The Alliance 19-2 drills are scheduled to be held from August 5 to August 23, the Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported.
While US and South Korean military leaders say such drills are necessary to maintain combat readiness, North Korea has long criticised them as a “preparation for invasion.”
Stopping the drills could serve the Kim regime’s goal of weakening the US’s security influence in the region and driving wedges between its allies in Japan and South Korea.
There has been no public discussion of any US promise to suspend military drills since Trump’s historic June 30 meeting with Kim in the Demilitarized Zone, in which they agreed to restart nuclear talks stalled since February.
Trump has previously dismissed the exercises as expensive and provocative, and unilaterally agreed to suspend some joint training during his first meeting with Kim last year.
The North Korean foreign ministry spokesman said in a separate statement that the decision to go ahead with the drills had reduced the need for the regime to keep its own promises, according to KCNA.
The remark appeared to be a reference to Kim’s pledge to halt tests of nuclear bombs and intercontinental ballistic missiles that could carry them across the Pacific.