▶ Watch Video: Trump boasts about Kim Jong Un friendship after slamming South Korea
Seoul — North Korea fired several short-range ballistic missiles, Seoul’s military said Thursday, hours after President Trump said he would meet again with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un later this year.
The latest launches by the nuclear-armed North came after Mr. Trump ordered a reduction in the ongoing joint South Korea-U.S. Ulchi Freedom Shield military exercises, which are now set to end Friday.
Pyongyang has long condemned U.S.-South Korean exercises as rehearsals for an invasion, often staging missile test launches during and around the drills.
Mr. Trump said he made the decision to scale back the war games “based on my very good relationship with” Kim. He said the longstanding annual military exercises sent a “totally inappropriate and hostile signal” to the North.
South Korea’s lack of assistance in the war with Iran was also a factor, he said.
Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty
The president said it was important to “get along” with Kim, adding that Pyongyang now had 57 “very powerful” nuclear weapons.
Officials in Seoul said Thursday that North Korea now has between 80 and 120 nuclear warheads, and they couldn’t explain the discrepancy between their estimate and Mr. Trump’s.
Just hours after Mr. Trump said he expected to meet again with Kim, an official from Seoul’s Joint Chiefs of Staff told the AFP that the North had fired “around 10 short-range ballistic missiles” from the Pyongyang area.
Jung Yeon-je/AFP/Getty
Japan earlier said a suspected “ballistic missile launched by North Korea a short while ago has already fallen,” according to an X post from the prime minister’s office.
Mr. Trump’s sudden focus on Kim and his scaling back of the joint drills with South Korea have alarmed Asian allies, sparking speculation that he may be seeking a foreign policy win as the Iran war grinds on in a costly stalemate.
Kim Yo Jong, the North Korean leader’s powerful sister, said Wednesday that her brother had “good memories and feelings” about Mr. Trump and that the relationship between the two leaders remained “excellent.”
She said, however, that she was unaware of any current communication between the two leaders.
H.R. McMaster reacts to Trump apparently pushing for meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un
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Mr. Trump met three times with Kim during his first term, lauding his relations with the authoritarian leader but failing to get him to make any solid commitments to rein in North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, which has advanced steadily since.
Her statement came hours after Seoul announced the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises would end on Friday — about a week earlier than planned — “at the suggestion of the U.S. side.”
The Pentagon said the reduced drills would cause “no degradation to U.S. training objectives.”
The exercises are designed to prepare for a possible attack by North Korea.
The United States has about 28,500 forces stationed in South Korea to bolster the country’s defenses — a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
South Korea’s Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back said Seoul remained opposed to officially recognizing the North as a nuclear-weapon state, something Kim has long sought.
Asked whether Washington had “given up” on North Korea’s denuclearization, Ahn said he did not believe so.
President Lee Jae Myung, who has long pushed for stronger homegrown defenses to reduce South Korea’s reliance on the United States, said Wednesday that he would “do his utmost” to support Mr. Trump’s peacemaking efforts with the North.