I have always said that Trump’s claims that South Korea is getting a free ride is inaccurate and Ambassador Lippert is calling him out on it as well. Trump should specify what he thinks South Korea should pay if he wants to criticize like this because South Korea pays a lot more than many other nations getting a free ride off of the US defense umbrella. With that said Trump probably fully knows that South Korea pays a lot already and is just repeating the claim that resonates with low information voters:
Amb. Mark Lippert speaks to members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea at a Seoul hotel on March 28, 2016. (Yonhap)
U.S. Ambassador to Seoul Mark Lippert on Monday dismissed accusations by Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump that South Korea is paying little to keep American troops on its soil.
Without naming Trump, Lippert cited various reasons why the allegations aren’t true, including the fact that South Korea shoulders 55 percent of all non-personnel costs and increases its defense spending by 3 to 5 percent annually.
“We feel very good about the resource sharing that we and the Republic of Korea do together as an alliance,” the ambassador said during a meeting with members of the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea. “It is remarkable.”
Lippert was responding to a request for comments on a “U.S. political candidate’s” contentions that the country receives little from South Korea in exchange for its support.
Trump has made repeated claims that South Korea is getting a free ride on defense, saying recently that the U.S. is “constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games” but being “reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing.” He also told The New York Times he would withdraw American troops from South Korea and Japan unless they boost their financial contributions to the upkeep of the U.S. military presence. [Yonhap]
If he some how gets elected it will be interesting to see if Trump is able to back up his big talk because getting China to do something on North Korea is not as easy as he makes it sound:
Calling North Korea a “disgrace,” Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said Sunday that China should solve the problem as Pyongyang’s main benefactor or be forced to see its trade with the United States suffer.
It was the latest in a series of remarks that Trump has been making since the North’s nuclear test last week to underscore his point that China has “total control” over Pyongyang, and the U.S. should force Beijing to fix the problem of the North.
“I think North Korea is a disgrace,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I would get China, and I would say, ‘Get in there and straighten it out. You’d better straighten it out.’ And, if you don’t straighten it out, we’re going to have trouble because we have power over China. We have trade power over China.”
Trump also said that while Iran is expected to have nuclear weapons due to what he calls a “stupid agreement” that the U.S. and other world powers concluded with Tehran last year, North Korea already has “very dangerous weapons of some sort.”
In another FOX TV interview, Trump again said that China is the one that should fix the North Korea problem.
“People ask me a number of questions. They were asking me how do you solve North Korea? Well, China should be solving North Korea; they have total power,” Trump said. [Yonhap]
Finally someone confronted Donald Trump on the false claims he has been making that the South Koreans pay the US nothing for assisting with their defense. Unfortunately Trump was allowed to now claim the South Koreans pay peanuts which is not true. The ROK has historically been paying anywhere between 43% – 47% of the cost of the US-ROK alliance. This year the ROK is paying $861 million which is not peanuts. Like I have always said, if someone wants to have an argument that the ROK should be paying more, that is a valid argument, but to claim they pay nothing or now pay peanuts is not accurate. However, Mr. Trump likely knows this, but is just making a political argument that sounds good to uninformed voters:
I figured it was only a matter of time before the South Korean media picked up on some of the inaccurate comments about Korea that Donald Trump has been repeating. I figure by now he has to know his comments are untrue, but just repeats them because they resonate with uninformed voters. It is pretty sad that we have gotten to the point that politicians have to craft messages that appeal to the uninformed:
Trump’s rise in popularity also garnered attention in South Korea after his remarks on the security of the two Koreas and the American military involvement.
Initially, South Korean media covered Trump’s remarks against women and immigrants as noteworthy international headlines, speculating that Trump’s popularity was American conservatives’ reaction against Obama’s more liberal policies, such as the Affordable Care Act and marriage equality.
However, Korean interest in Trump increased after he suggested that South Korea gives nothing back in exchange for U.S. military protection.
“(Whenever) they’re in trouble, our military takes care. You know what we get? Nothing,” he said during a South Carolina rally last month.
His comments made in 2011 before the 2012 presidential election also resurfaced in hindsight, when he also said that the U.S. military protected South Korea, but “they don’t pay us.”
Trump made similar remarks on Korea again last Sunday, saying that South Korea makes “a fortune” from their exports. “Between Samsung, and LG, and Sharp, they all come from South Korea,” he said, misidentifying Japanese company Sharp as Korean.
“Why are we defending everybody? And these are rich nations. South Korea makes billions and billions. We get nothing. We are like the stupid people that go and defend everybody,” he added.
His remarks drew some ire from the public, and South Korean news outlets described Trump’s remarks as “misinformed” or “misguided,” citing that South Korea has long shared the cost of having a U.S. military presence in the country.
Korea currently has about 28,500 U.S. troops stationed in the country to help defend against North Korea. Additionally, it is also seen as being in America’s interests to be within geographic proximity to China.
Last year, Korea renewed its agreement with the United States to pay 920 billion won ($770 million) toward the upkeep of U.S. troops here, a 5.8 percent increase from the previous year. [Korea Herald]
