U.S. President Donald Trump talks to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House, Friday, Aug. 9, 2019, in Washington, as he prepares to leave Washington for his annual August holiday at his New Jersey golf club. AP

U.S. President Donald Trump said Friday that he received a "beautiful" letter from North Korea's leader this week in which Kim Jong-un expressed his displeasure with military exercises between South Korea and the U.S.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said he was never a fan of the exercises either but he let them happen this time because they allowed a "turnover of various areas" to South Korea, which he liked.

The allied drills began Monday to test South Korea's capabilities to retake operational control from Washington during wartime.

North Korea has condemned all exercises between Seoul and Washington as an invasion rehearsal and recently conducted four rounds of short-range ballistic missile tests as a "warning" to the allies.

"I got a very beautiful letter from Kim Jong-un yesterday," Trump said. "I think we'll have another meeting. He really wrote a beautiful, three-page ― I mean, right from top to bottom ― a really beautiful letter."

In the memo, Kim said he "wasn't happy with the war games, the war games on the other side with the United States," Trump said. "I've never liked it either ... I don't like paying for it. We should be reimbursed for it."

Trump and Kim have held three meetings to negotiate the dismantlement of North Korea's nuclear weapons program in exchange for sanctions relief.

At their last meeting at the inter-Korean border in June, the two agreed to resume working-level negotiations that stalled after their no-deal summit in Vietnam in February.