US President Donald Trump on Tuesday revealed that the US will halt joint military drills with South Korea following the new agreement he signed with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Trump also said that North Korea appears truthful in its commitment to denuclearization and that Pyongyang had an understanding of the need to achieve complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program before the summit.

“We will be stopping war games,” Trump said, adding that stopping joint military drills with South Korea would save a “tremendous amount of money.”

In a drastic change from his previous stance on the military issue of the Korean Peninsula, Trump added that he considers the war games “very provocative.”

Trump, however, ruled out the possibility of reducing the US military presence in the South for the time being.

Regarding the matter of the term CVID not being included in the agreement, Trump said that there was no time to do so and that Kim understood that is the condition demanded by the US.

“There was no time. The process will take place, they have started. They blew up their (nuclear) testing site. He knew prior to coming, we discussed it, Mike discussed it very strongly with his counterpart in North Korea,” Trump said.

He added that if he had considered North Korea to be rejecting conditions regarding CVID, no agreement would have been reached at the summit.

By Choi He-suk (cheesuk@heraldcorp.com)