US, South Korea fail to agree on cost of American troops posted on peninsula
- Washington’s chief negotiator said the US was ‘not focused’ on getting Seoul to cough up US$5 billion per year, as previously reported
- Experts have warned that if no agreement is reached soon, it could throw the future of the US presence in South Korea into doubt
No deal by December 31, when the current agreement expires, may result in a repeat of last year when the two countries missed a year-end deadline but reach a retroactive deal in the new year. The two side next meet in January in the US.
But the US chief negotiator James DeHart told reporters after Wednesday’s meeting that “[US$5 billion] is not the number we are currently focused on in the negotiations … when we reach an agreement, we will be in a position to explain that number and how we got there.”
“We have been listening, we have been adjusting and we have been compromising, and we know that agreement … when we reach the agreement, the figure will be different from our initial proposal and probably different from what we’ve heard from the Korean side so far,” he added.
