South Korea's presidential Blue House has dismissed a New York Times report that says U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for drawing down U.S. troops in South Korea... weeks before he's scheduled to hold a landmark meeting with North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un.
In a text message sent out to the Blue House press corps Friday morning, the South Korean president's senior press secretary Yoon Young-chan said... President Moon's national security adviser Chung Eui-yong, currently in Washington to meet with his U.S. counterparts, had confirmed this report with a key member of the U.S. National Security Council who flatly dismissed it as "groundless."
The U.S. Defense Department also said it has not received any orders to withdraw troops from the Korean Peninsula and is maintaining the same posture in the region.
In its May 3rd edition, the New York Times reported that Mr. Trump had ordered such troop reduction on the Korean peninsula citing several "unnamed people briefed on the deliberations."