New Zealand had 19 Defence Force personnel taking part in a major multinational military exercise in South Korea this month and found out through news reports that the exercise was being cut short by six days.
Exercise Ulchi Freedom Shield was scheduled to run from 17 to 27 August with an estimated 18,000 troops from at least 12 members of the United Nations Command. Hours before it started, United States President Donald Trump used social media to order the Pentagon to substantially reduce the drills, writing that the exercises “are not only costly…but send a signal that is totally inappropriate and hostile.”
The exercise instead finished on Friday. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed the reduction came at the suggestion of the United States, with field manoeuvre training scaled back and some activities converted to computer simulations.
The New Zealand Defence Force told RNZ it was not given advance warning and learned about the change from media coverage. Twelve New Zealanders were already filling established United Nations Command positions and another seven had been sent over specifically to help plan, coordinate and run the exercise.
An NZDF spokesperson said “NZDF received the same notification about the proposed changes as did other troop-contributing nations.”
Foreign Minister Winston Peters did not pretend otherwise. “It was a surprise, I can’t deny that,” he said. He also pointed out how much New Zealand has invested in the arrangement. “We’ve been there all this time, we have the second highest number of soldiers there.”
Peters’ office said New Zealand remained “a long-standing supporter of peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula.”
That support is not a token gesture and it is not new. New Zealand fought in the Korean War between 1950 and 1953. Around 4,700 New Zealanders served in the contingent known as Kayforce and another 1,300 served on Royal New Zealand Navy frigates, and 45 died in New Zealand forces, 33 of them during the war itself. Since 1998 the country has kept staff inside the United Nations Command and its Military Armistice Commission, the body that monitors the 1953 armistice along the Demilitarised Zone. According to the NZDF, six of those personnel work at command headquarters on planning and operational concepts and six work on armistice monitoring and the diplomatic machinery that goes with it.
The commitment grew sharply under the current Government. In June 2024 Cabinet agreed to send six extra personnel for the United Nations Command Honour Guard and a platoon of up to 35 soldiers to work alongside command forces, lifting the possible total from 12 to 53. Three more were added in March this year. New Zealand soldiers have since trained with the Republic of Korea Marine Corps for the first time.
All of which makes the past week awkward. New Zealand does not have a defence treaty with the United States. What it has instead is a long list of contributions, made willingly, on the understanding that being useful buys a seat at the table and a phone call before decisions land. This time the phone call arrived at the same time as everyone else’s, which is to say after the announcement.
The scale of the cut also matters. Ulchi Freedom Shield is the largest annual exercise on the peninsula and the main way the United Nations Command tests whether its member countries can actually work together if the armistice fails. Trimming six days off it, and moving live training into simulation, changes what the participating countries learn.
Trump linked his decision to his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and to the cost of the drills. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said he recognised Trump’s “will and efforts to create conditions for dialogue” with the north. North Korea was less impressed. Kim Yo Jong, sister of the North Korean leader, said the exercises remained provocative and aggressive.
Whatever the diplomatic merits, the practical effect for New Zealand is that a deployment it has steadily expanded was reshaped without its input.
There is a decision coming that will test how the Government reads all this. The mandate for the New Zealand deployment to the Republic of Korea expires in September, which is next month. Cabinet has to decide whether to renew it, shrink it, grow it again or let it lapse, and it has to do that roughly six weeks out from the general election on 7 November.
Defence Minister Chris Penk, who took the portfolio in April, has not said publicly what he intends to recommend. The NZDF said it had not yet received enough information from United States authorities to work out what the reduction means for future activities, which is a polite way of saying nobody has explained it yet.
Defence spending has been one of the quieter areas of agreement in this Parliament. Budget 2026 put $1.5 billion towards maritime security and the Government has committed to lifting defence spending steadily over the coming years. The harder question, and the one this week has put in front of voters, is what New Zealand actually gets in return for turning up. If you want to check where the parties stand on defence and foreign policy before you vote, our voting tool compares their positions side by side.
For the 19 personnel on the ground, the exercise is over and they will come home earlier than planned. For the ministers who sent them, the question is whether the September renewal is signed off as a matter of routine, or whether someone asks the Americans for a better explanation first.
What do you think? Should New Zealand keep expanding its commitment in Korea, or is it time to ask harder questions about what we get out of it? Leave a comment below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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