Trump Enraged South Korea to Please the North. It Didn’t Work.

On Thursday, North Korea launched several ballistic missiles toward the Sea of Japan, according to South Korea's military. This came a day after North Korea dismissed Donald Trump's apparent attempt at appeasement by reducing joint military training with South Korea. Kim Yo Jong, a top figure in North Korea's ruling party and supreme leader Kim Jong Un's sister, stated on Wednesday that the provocative and aggressive nature of the drills would not change, despite their duration and size being reduced.

She mentioned other military drills conducted by the US and South Korea earlier in the year and South Korea's acceleration of nuclear-powered submarine development. Prior to the drills, North Korea threatened retaliation with a "new level of a deterrent," having already fired at least two ballistic missiles into the sea earlier in the month.

Kim Yo Jong claimed that relations between her brother and Trump were still "excellent," but she said she was "completely unaware" of any communications between the two following Trump's decision to scale back the joint drills by about half, a claim Trump had made earlier in the week. The ongoing tension between Kim Jong Un and Trump dates back to Trump's first term, when peace negotiations collapsed in 2019 due to disputes over sanctions relief for partial denuclearization.

Since then, North Korea has sought to militarize further and cooperate with Russia, but last September, Kim expressed openness to resuming talks if the US stopped obsessing over eliminating North Korea's nuclear weapons. However, Trump's decision to cut military training with South Korea seems to have had negative consequences, angering South Korea to the point of President Lee Jae Myung calling for full control of its military operations from the US, despite Trump claiming the move would keep countries like South Korea and Japan safe and pushing other Asian countries to boost their own defense spending and seek new allies.