Last Minute South Korea-US Troop Cost-Sharing Talks Fail, Deal To Expire

With the nation’s attention focused on impeachment, a major development in Korea has been largely absent from media focus, which could have lasting devastating consequences going forward, especially considering we are perhaps days away from Pyongyang’s promised “Christmas gift” — which is likely to come in the form of a long-range ballistic missile test. 

The Trump administration’s new nearly $5 billion price tag given to South Korea in early November to cover its share of the costs of housing American troops, which have been stationed on the peninsula as a deterrent against the north via US Indo-Pacific Command forces since 1957, led to two days of last minute negotiation efforts this week.

These negotiations have ended in failure on Wednesday, with no more talks scheduled before the existing deal expires on December 31.

The talks were led by South Korea’s chief negotiator Jeong Eun-bo and his US counterpart, James DeHart, and are expected to continue in January. While a retroactive agreement could be reached, there’s growing popular anger among the South Korean population and leadership over the Trump administration’s apparent intractable position on the matter.

In a potential softening by the US side, DeHart told reporters after Wednesday’s meeting that “($5 billion) is not a 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.”

Reuters notes that “Some experts, both US and Korean, have warned that if no agreement is reached, it could throw the entire future of the US presence in South Korea into doubt.”

And AntiWar.com’s Jason Ditz observes that Trump could be overplaying his hand on this one:

President Trump’s last minute demands for a massive increase could be shaping up to be a huge mistake, as South Korea was already paying more than most nations do for US troops, and had agreed to a more modest increase. Getting from $800 million per year to around $1 billion per year was one thing, but Trump’s zero-hero demand for $5 billion per year angered many in South Korea.

And Seoul could leverage its increasing opening and bettered military ties with China to get the US to back down from massive price hike:

The US didn’t do a good job of justifying this unprecedented increase, either, with administration officials arguing that South Korea is rich and therefore could afford it. With South Korea working on improved military ties with China and making peace overtures to North Korea, however, it isn’t clear that what they could afford is even necessary.

Last month US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper told reporters at a briefing in Seoul that South Korea is “a wealthy country and could and should pay more” for the deployment of US forces on its soil.

Prior to the massive nearly $5BN price hike, South Korea already agreed to pay $920 million annually to maintain the roughly 29,000 US troops in the country.