Tag: US-ROK Alliance

This shouldn’t be surprising news to anyone following the US-ROK cost sharing negotiations:

The Pentagon has offered the White House options to reduce American troop levels in South Korea, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Citing unnamed U.S. officials, the paper said the options were presented in March following a broader review of options for withdrawing troops from around the world, including in the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Asia.

The White House requested the review last fall, and by December, the Pentagon had come up with broad ideas, it said.

No decision has yet been made to reduce the number of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea from the current 28,500, according to the WSJ.

Yonhap

You can read more at link, but President Trump has already reduced U.S. troop levels in Germany over cost sharing issues and he has been having the same monetary disagreements with South Korea. This report I suspect was leaked to the Wall Street Journal in order to pressure the Korean side that Trump is serious about USFK troop withdrawals.

However, this all may be playing out as Korean President Moon Jae-in wants it to play out. Moon is a very skilled politician that needs to keep the Korean right at bay and public anxiety down.  If he openly advocated for a USFK withdrawal, that would give the South Korean right an issue to strongly attack him with and cause much public anxiety after decades of security guarantees provided by US forces.  

This is why President Moon has been saying all the right things that USFK should remain, to include claiming Kim Jong-un understands this as well. However, if troop withdrawals do happen he has political cover to not be blamed for it by claiming President Trump’s monetary demands were unreasonable which is a position likely a majority of Koreans believe.

It doesn’t take an expert to know that the cancellation of the US-ROK military exercise will not motivate North Korea to want to discuss denuclearization when they have no intention to denuclearize:

Amid growing speculation that joint military exercises between South Korea and the United States are likely to be called off in a bid to prevent the spread of COVID-19, and appease North Korea, diplomatic experts believe a cancellation as an olive branch to Pyongyang is not a good idea, saying there will be no “reciprocity” from the isolated country.

Currently, the government is in a quandary over whether to cancel the annual drills as the COVID-19 pandemic shows no sign of abating. The exercises will bring hundreds of American troops here, raising concerns over possible new infections.

In addition, further deepening Seoul’s calculations is the possibility of military retaliation from the Kim Jong-un regime, as the totalitarian state describes the exercises as hostile action by the U.S. against the North. 

The government also wants the exercises to be focused on assessing the Korean military’s relevant capabilities on its way to regaining wartime operational control (OPCON) from the U.S. by 2022. Either a delay or a cancellation of the drills could disrupt the timetable for that. 

“If the military exercises are canceled or postponed, it is possible North Korea will relent and agree to an eventual working level meeting, in response to recent U.S.-South Korea requests to resume negotiations. I doubt, however, that the cancellation or postponement of the exercises will motivate the North to resume working-level negotiations, given that it has refused to meet with the U.S. or ROK since late 2019,” Joseph DeTrani, a former U.S. special envoy to the six-party talks, told The Korea Times, referring to South Korea by its formal name, the Republic of Korea.

Korea Times

You can read more expert opinions at the link.

I figured that South Korea would take notice of President Trump’s threat to pull U.S. troops out of Germany. However, I would not be surprised if the Moon administration would welcome removing half of U.S. troops:

U.S. President Donald Trump said Monday he will cut the number of U.S. soldiers in Germany by about half, fueling concerns in Seoul he could make similar reductions to American troops in Korea.    
   
“One of the only countries that hasn’t agreed to pay what they’re supposed to pay is Germany,” Trump said to reporters at the White House in Washington. “So I said, until they pay we’re removing our soldiers, a number of our soldiers, by about half. And then when we get down to 25,000, we’ll see where we’re going.”  
   
Trump claimed that Germany was “delinquent” in payments to NATO and has been treating the United States “very badly on trade.”    
   
He added, “And I’m not only talking about Germany, by the way; I’m talking about plenty of other countries,” without specifying further.   

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

A temporary deal has been reached to get Korean employees back to work on U.S. bases:

 The United States and South Korea agreed to a $200 million stopgap measure allowing more than 4,000 local base employees to return to work after months of unpaid leave, despite the allies’ failure to reach a broader defense cost-sharing deal.

The Pentagon said Wednesday that it has accepted Seoul’s proposal to fund the labor costs for all South Korean employees of U.S. Forces Korea through the end of this year amid stalled talks on reaching a new contract known as the Special Measures Agreement.

“This decision effectively ends the partial furlough,” USFK commander Gen. Robert Abrams said in a separate statement. “We expect our entire workforce to return back to USFK within the next few weeks.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but it appears there is still no long term cost sharing deal that is going to happen any time soon.

Here is the latest on the USFK cost sharing issue:

US President Donald Trump told a press briefing Thursday that South Korea had agreed to pay “substantial money” to the US for the upkeep of the 28,500 American troops stationed here, repeating what he had told Reuters a week earlier. 

“It costs us a lot of money. And if we’re going to defend countries, they should also respect us by making a contribution,” Trump said.

The Trump administration is reportedly pushing Korea to pay about $1.3 billion, a whopping 49 percent more than Korea paid last year and roughly four times the amount that Seoul and Washington shook hands on for an interim deal last March.

Trump openly rejected the deal and has since pressed Korea to shoulder a greater share of the defense costs.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

As I have long said, I did not expect a cost sharing deal to get done before the April 15th Korean parliamentary elections and it appears that will be the case:

U.S. President Donald Trump has rejected South Korea’s offer to raise its contribution to shared defense costs by at least 13 percent, a news report said Friday.

Trump made the decision last week after consultations with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, Reuters said, quoting unidentified current and former U.S. officials.

Esper made a phone call to South Korean Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo earlier this week to press Seoul to quickly agree to much higher contributions, it said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but politically there was no way the ruling party would agree to a major increase in defense spending. By the Trump administration turning down the modest increase, the Moon administration can go into the election saying they tried, but the Trump administration is too greedy and that is why all you Korean employees that work on U.S. bases are laid off.

The next decision by the Moon administration will be if they want to wait until after the U.S. Presidential election to make a deal.

Previous reporting has said the US and the ROK are close to a new cost sharing deal, but it has not been reached soon enough to stop the furlough of thousands of Korean employees:

Following months of warnings, the U.S. military put 4,500 South Korean base employees — about half its local workforce — on unpaid leave indefinitely Wednesday after the allies failed to agree on a new defense cost-sharing deal.

The furlough — the first of its kind — was a blow to the alliance and joint military readiness to fight on the divided peninsula, which commanders say already has been jeopardized by restrictions on movement aimed at preventing the spread of the coronavirus.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

I wonder if the coronavirus test kits that South Korea has agreed to send to the U.S. had any bearing on the ongoing US-ROK cost sharing negotiations:

U.S. and South Korea are close to reaching a defense cost-sharing deal, a negotiator said Tuesday in Seoul on the eve of American military plans to put half of its local work force on unpaid leave.

U.S. Forces Korea was able to keep about 4,500 South Korean employees determined to be essential for maintaining “life, health, safety and minimum readiness.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the US-ROK cost sharing negotiations:

The latest push from Washington came Wednesday, after the Defense Department hinted that the cost-sharing agreement might be high on the agenda, if not the highest, in the upcoming Feb. 24 meeting between Defense Minister Jeong Kyeong-doo and his U.S. counterpart Mark Esper.

“We’ve got to work through the agreement for funding of forces, so that will obviously be a topic we will discuss,” Jonathan Hoffman, assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, said in a press briefing. “He’s looking forward to this meeting next week.”

When asked about the holding of joint military exercises this spring, Hoffman said he had nothing to say on the matter, which some observers say indicates the U.S. is prioritizing the cost-sharing issue in the upcoming meeting above all other matters.

Washington pressured Seoul further during the press briefing by giving details on a plan to potentially furlough 9,000 Korean workers on USFK bases.

Korea Times

You can read more at the link, but I continue to believe that nothing will get done on this until after April’s parliamentary elections. The Moon administration knows they are going to end up paying more and likely don’t want to give in on this issue until after the elections. If this is the case than the Korean workers on U.S. bases will be furloughed.