USFK Cost Sharing Negotiations Update
It looks like the operational control issue isn’t the only thing maybe needing a ultimatum to get completed:
South Korea and the United States on Wednesday resumed talks on how to share expenses for maintaining American soldiers here, with Seoul hoping to conclude the negotiations this time.
“We hope to strike a deal this time, given that we don’t have much time left to get the National Assembly’s approval on the result this year,” Cho Tae-yong, director-general of the North American affairs bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, recently told reporters.
The two-day session in Seoul, aimed at renewing the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), is the sixth of its kind this year.
Technically, it is necessary for the ministry to get the lawmakers’ approval before the agreement goes into effect next year. But there was an exemption of the rule in 2005 when the cost-sharing talks ended four months after the deadline.
The US negotiators have been trying to get South Korea to pay more for the maintenance of USFK because South Korea only pays approximately 40% of the costs of maintaining the alliance while next door neighbor Japan pays approximately 70% of the costs of maintaining the USFJ forces in Japan. The US would be happy to get South Korea just to pay 50% of the upkeep but it appears the negotiators probably won’t even get that:
After several months of discussion with Washington, Seoul agreed in April 2005 to allocate 680.4 billion won ($710 million) per year in 2005 and 2006 to pay for the presence of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).
That was a decrease of 8.9 percent from the 2004 expenditure.
During the five rounds of talks in the past, Seoul wanted to reduce its burden further, as Washington is determined to cut U.S. troop numbers.
But Washington called for an “equitable” sharing of the expenses, saying it made an exception when it agreed to reduce South Korea’s burden for 2005 and 2006 because Seoul was under financial pressure because of its dispatch of non-combat troops to Iraq.
If the US is only going to get a one digit increase from the South Koreans that means that Korea will not even pay 50% of the USFK costs. It appears that the US negotiators are now paying for the mistake of giving the South Koreans incentive to dispatch troops to Iraq by temporarily cutting costs for the past two years due to the troop dispatch to Iraq. Plus what did the US get out of the troop dispatch? Improved plumbing?
What annoys me most about this is that the South Koreans are willing to give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the North Koreans, the ones who threaten the very existence of the country, while playing penny pinchers with USFK which is dedicated to preserving the existence of the nation.
Another thing that annoys me is that I often hear from average South Koreans that the Korean government gives special pay to the USFK soldiers. This is absolutely untrue but it seems to persist within Korean society. Feel free to add your thoughts if anyone disagrees.
Some of you garrison guys out there can correct me if I’m wrong, but most the money from the Korean government goes to renovating or making new buildings, which with the reduction of USFK camps from 41 to 10 means the Korean government is getting many of the buildings back. It also goes to paying the salaries of Korean employees that work for USFK. Additionally South Korea gets a discount in their cost sharing by providing USFK with civilian vehicles. The civilian vehicles are bought at discounted rates but when considered in the cost sharing their are totalled up at their full retail sale price.
Like I said before this is all penny pinching stuff that Koreans are notorious for unless of course it Kim Jong-il demanding aid, then it seems that everyone in the Korean government is stumbling over each other to provide him whatever he wants.
