I tend to agree that it is likely not good for U.S. creditability to try and renegotiate a deal signed by the prior Biden administration:
The Trump administration will face credibility issues if it attempts, following the imposition of a 10% tariff on South Korea, to renegotiate the cost of stationing U.S. troops there, according to policy experts. President Donald Trump proposed a streamlined, “one-stop shopping” deal on defense and trade after a 30-minute call on April 8 with acting South Korean President Han Duck-soo, according to a Truth Social post from Trump that day.
But any attempt to renegotiate the defense spending agreement reached in November is premature until South Korea elects a permanent replacement for former President Yoon Suk Yeol in June, said Hwang Jihwan, a University of Seoul professor of international relations, by phone Friday. Yoon, impeached in December over his failed attempt to impose martial law, was formally removed from office on April 4 by the South Korean Constitutional Court.
From the U.S. perspective it makes sense to have the flexibility to redeploy troops from Korea to assist with a Taiwan contingency. However, this Op-Ed in the Korea Times is against because of some hypothetical possibility of Japanese troops on Korea soil:
Japan’s recent articulation of a “One Theater” doctrine — encompassing the East China Sea, Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula — marks a troubling shift in strategic thinking that risks destabilizing Northeast Asia. Proposed by Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani and seemingly welcomed by U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, this doctrine is being presented as a pragmatic response to a volatile regional security environment. In reality, it threatens to undermine national sovereignty, disrupt the delicate geopolitical balance of the Indo-Pacific and draw democratic allies into conflicts not of their choosing.
At its core, the “one battlefield” concept posits that regional flashpoints — such as Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula and the East China Sea — are so interconnected that they must be treated as a unified operational theater. While this might serve military planning purposes, it dangerously flattens political nuance in favor of operational efficiency. It treats sovereign nations not as independent actors with unique security needs, but as interchangeable assets within a broader strategic front defined by Japan and, potentially, the United States.
Of particular concern is the implication that, under this doctrine, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) could be redeployed from the Korean Peninsula to support operations in the event of a Taiwan contingency. Such a move would not only risk undermining deterrence on the peninsula — where a fragile armistice holds between South and North Korea — but also compromise South Korea’s core defense posture. The Korean Peninsula is not a backwater theater; it is a primary front involving a nuclear-armed adversary. To subordinate Korean security to cross-strait dynamics is both strategically unsound and politically inflammatory.
Historical memory further complicates this issue. Any framework that implicitly or explicitly involves Japanese military activity on or near the Korean Peninsula is politically incendiary. The legacy of Japan’s 1910-45 colonial occupation of Korea continues to cast a long shadow over bilateral relations. For many South Koreans across the political spectrum, the idea of Japanese boots on or near Korean soil — however hypothetical — remains an emotional and constitutional red line. Even under the banner of collective defense, such a scenario would provoke fierce domestic backlash and could fracture regional unity.
You can read more at the link, but it almost sounds like this author rather have North Korean and Chinese Soldiers on ROK territory instead of Japanese. With that said I cannot think of a scenario where Japanese troops would be needed on Korean soil. Japan’s geography makes it an important location to deploy U.S. aircraft, ships, and supplies from for either a Taiwan or North Korea contingency. They Japanese military will not be needed to deploy troops to Korea.
This author is really using the deployment of Japanese troops to Korea as a red herring to obscure the author’s real concern which is the flexibility of the U.S. to deploy troops from Korea for a Taiwan contingency.
I guess we will see in the coming days if North Korea does anything in response to this latest air drill from the ROK and US:
South Korea and the United States on Tuesday staged joint air drills, involving at least one U.S. B-1B bomber, over the Korean Peninsula, the defense ministry said, in a show of force against North Korean military threats.
The drills, which also mobilized South Korean F-35A and F-16 fighter jets and U.S. F-16s, were designed to demonstrate the allies’ capabilities to respond to North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile threats, according to the ministry.
The drills coincided with the 113th birth anniversary of North Korea’s late state founder Kim Il-sung, a major national holiday in the North, called the “Day of the Sun.”
This demonstrates how concerned the ROK was of Trump winning the election that they have prioritized getting this cost sharing agreement signed before the election:
South Korea and the United States formally signed a defense cost-sharing agreement Monday, as Seoul seeks to speed up its domestic ratification procedure to ensure the stable stationing of American troops here ahead of the U.S. elections.
The signing came a month after the allies reached a new five-year deal on determining Seoul’s share of its cost for the upkeep of the 28,500-strong U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).
Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul and U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Philip Goldberg signed the deal, known as the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), at the foreign ministry in Seoul, officials said.
Under the 12th SMA, which will last until 2030, South Korea will pay 1.52 trillion won (US$1.19 billion) in 2026, up 8.3 percent from 1.4 trillion won in 2025.
South Korea and the United States will begin their large-scale amphibious landing exercise in the southeastern city of Pohang and the eastern coast this week to build up the allies’ combat readiness posture and interoperability, the South’s Navy and Marine Corps said Sunday.
This year’s Ssangyong (double dragon) exercise, which runs from Monday through Sept. 7, will mobilize division-level landing forces and some 40 vessels, including two amphibious assault ships, the ROKS Dokdo and the ROKS Marado, as well as the USS Boxer, according to military officials.
The drills will also bring together some 40 aircraft, such as F-35B radar-evading jets, and around 40 amphibious assault vehicles, the Navy and Marine Corps said in a joint release.
The Ulchi Freedom Shield exercise is here again. Any bets on what provocations that North Koreans will launch in response?:
South Korea and the United States kicked off a major combined military exercise for its 11-day run Monday to bolster their joint defense readiness amid advancing North Korean military threats.
The annual Ulchi Freedom Shield (UFS) exercise, which runs through Aug. 29, got under way in the face of growing concerns over Pyongyang’s continued weapons development, highlighted by its launches of 37 ballistic missiles this year alone and heightened cross-border tensions from the North’s recent trash balloon campaign.
Based on an all-out war scenario, the UFS features main computer simulation-based command post exercise, concurrent field training and civil defense drills, according to the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).
While the exercise will be similar in scale to the previous year, involving around 19,000 South Korean troops, it will include 48 field training events, such as amphibious landing and live-fire drills, up from 38 field events conducted last year. The number of brigade-level exercises will also increase to 17 this year, compared with four from the previous year.
I sure hope the US negotiators are using a possible Trump presidency as leverage during these negotiations:
A U.S. delegation for defense cost sharing talks with South Korea arrives at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul to hold a three-day fourth round of negotiations on June 25, 2024. (Yonhap)
Seoul and Washington launched the negotiations in April to renew the cost-sharing deal, known as the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), amid the view that South Korea is seeking an early deal to avoid tough bargaining in case former U.S. President Donald Trump returns to the White House.
Under Trump’s presidency, Washington had demanded more than a fivefold increase in Seoul’s payment to US$5 billion.
The current six-year SMA, due to expire at the end of next year, committed South Korea to paying $1.03 billion for 2021, a 13.9 percent increase from 2019, and increasing the payment every year for the subsequent four years in line with the rise in Seoul’s defense spending.
South Korea has said it seeks to have negotiations based on the position that its share should come at a “reasonable level,” to create an environment for the stable stationing of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) and to strengthen the allies’ combined defense posture.
Here is one of the typicals responses from the playbook used by the US and ROK in response to North Korean provocations:
The United States on Wednesday deployed one B-1B bomber for joint bombing drills in South Korea for the first time in seven years amid heightened tensions over North Korea’s trash balloon campaign and GPS jamming attacks.
The U.S. heavy bomber from Andersen Air Base in Guam and two South Korean F-15K fighters released live GBU-38, 500-pound joint direct attack munitions, to strike multiple simulated targets at Pilsung Range in Taebaek, 181 kilometers southeast of Seoul, according to the U.S. 7th Air Force in South Korea.
U.S. B-1B bombers last held such an exercise in South Korea in 2017.
South Korea is considering sharing advanced military technology with the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia through the so-called AUKUS partnership, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said. https://t.co/CYNgsuMopP
