North Korea Wants the US to Cancel Joint Military Drills with South Korea

As I have long said the long term goal of the Kim regime is to get USFK off of the peninsula and the ongoing nuclear negotiations appear to be trying to advance that effort:

Joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States are likely to become a key topic at the denuclearization talks between the U.S. and North Korea.

The Rodong Sinmun, the North’s mouthpiece newspaper, published an op-ed article claiming the drills as a major source of security concern in Northeast Asia.

“It is an international practice for two negotiating sides to refrain from any military activities,” the article said.

“When the U.S. deploys strategic nuclear weapons during the joint military exercises with South Korea, all the ongoing dialogue momentum will return to the original state.”  (…..)

The regime last week threatened to cancel a planned summit between Trump and Kim, expressing anger over the Max Thunder joint air force exercises.

As the drills ended their two-week run last week, the regime ramped up criticism of the Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) exercises between Seoul and Washington, annually held sometime around August.

“South Korea is making a fuss that it does not have plans to downsize UFG drills in August,” the propaganda newspaper said. It said the exercises are the root cause of breaking up peace and stability on the peninsula, urging their suspension in line with the ongoing dialogue momentum.  [Korea Times]

You can read more more at the link, but cancelling Key Resolve, UFG, and other joint exercises will impact the readiness of USFK.  These drills are especially important in a theater where many of the US troops rotate out in a year causing constant turnover.  North Korea appears to be trying to get the ROK to advocate to the US to cancel the upcoming UFG exercise.  If the ROK pushes hard to cancel the exercise this will likely cause tension within the US-ROK alliance which is what the Kim regime wants.