US, Seoul cut short meet over sharing defence costs
SEOUL: US and South Korean officials yesterday publicly acknowledged the allies remain far apart in negotiations for increasing South Korea’s contributions to the costs for maintaining the American military presence on its soil.
US negotiator James DeHart said the US side decided to cut short a meeting that lasted less than two hours because Seoul’s proposals “were not responsive to our request for fair and equitable burden sharing’.’
Seoul’s Foreign Ministry said Washington has been calling for a “drastic increase’’ in South Korea’s contributions which the country finds unacceptable.
The turbulent negotiations come at a delicate time for the allies, which face a growing North Korean threat and have squabbled over Seoul’s declaration to terminate a 2016 military intelligence-sharing pact with Japan amid a bilateral row.
“We look forward to resuming our negotiations when the Korean side is ready to work on the basis of partnership and the basis of mutual trust,’’ Mr DeHart said, reading out a prepared statement in front of cameras. He did not take questions from reporters.
Jeong Eun-bo, a South Korean negotiator, told reporters that the countries have scheduled their next round of talks, but didn’t specify when.
Mr Jeong refused to answer when asked how much the Americans were asking for. But he said Washington has demanded that Seoul cover a broader range of costs in addition to what it has been already providing, which includes the wages of South Korean employees at US bases and costs for facility construction and logistics support. Washington and Seoul in February signed a new cost-sharing deal for 2019 that required South Korea to pay about 1.04 trillion won (about 27 billion baht), shortly before a summit in Vietnam between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un that collapsed over disagreements in exchanging sanctions relief and disarmament.
South Korea in 2018 provided about US$830 million, covering roughly 40% of the cost of the deployment of 28,500 US soldiers whose presence is meant to deter aggression from North Korea.
The Trump administration has been pushing for South Korea to pay more. During a visit to South Korea last week, US Defence Secretary Mark Esper pressed Washington’s case that South Korea must pay a bigger share of the costs for maintaining US troops in the country.