South Korea refuses to pay US$5 billion to cover cost of US troops, causing talks to break down
- Each side claims the other was not prepared to reach a compromise on sharing the costs for hosting 28,500 US troops to deter North Korea
- Donald Trump has floated the idea of pulling US troops from the Korean peninsula, which remains technically in a state of war
“Our position is that it should be within the mutually acceptable Special Measures Agreement (SMA) framework that has been agreed upon by South Korea and the US for the past 28 years,” South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said, referring to the cost-sharing deal’s official name.
“The US believes that the share of defence spending should be increased significantly by creating a new category,” the ministry said in a statement.
The top US negotiator, James DeHart, said the Americans cut short the talks to “give the Korean side some time to reconsider and I hope to put forward new proposals that would enable both sides to work towards a mutually acceptable agreement in the spirit of our great alliance.”
“Unfortunately, the proposals that were put forward by the Korean negotiating team were not responsive to our request for fair and equitable burden sharing,” DeHart told a briefing.
Negotiators left the table after only about one hour of discussions that were scheduled to continue throughout the day, South Korean media reported, citing unnamed foreign ministry officials.