The United States and South Korea have announced they will call off springtime military drills in a bid to back diplomacy with North Korea.

The move was made in a bid to boost efforts to encourage Kim Jong-Un to ditch his country's nuclear weapons.

The Pentagon said the US and South Korean defence chiefs decided to conclude the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle series of exercise.

North Korea has previously called the allies' drills an invasion rehearsal and acts of aggression.

The dictatorship responded with its own military exercises.

It comes just two days after Donald Trump marched out of summit with Kim Jong-un after the pair failed to agree a nuke deal.

The leaders scrapped a planned signing ceremony as their second day of crunch talks in Hanoi, Vietnam, ended without an agreement on how to denuclearise the Korean peninsula.

At a press conference, the US President said the despot refused to dismantle North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear complex and wanted the sanctions imposed on his crackpot regime lifted.

A Korean Defence statement said: "The minister and secretary made clear that the alliance's decision regarding the adjustment of the exercise and drills reflects both countries' expectation to back diplomatic efforts to reduce tensions and achieve the complete denuclearisation of the Korean Peninsula through a final, full verified method."