WASHINGTON (Yonhap) -- The United States requires a separate free trade agreement with South Korea to deepen their defense industry cooperation, a retired American Army commander said.
"The U.S. needs to develop a Military South Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement to further incentivize cooperation between our respective defense industries and encourage South Korean firms to enter the U.S. defense market," retired Gen. Walter Sharp said in a recent contribution to the Defense News.
Sharp served as commander of the 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea for three years before ending his military service in 2011. He now works as senior adviser at Monitor National Security, a California-based defense strategy consulting firm.
In a joint submission with John Prior, associate partner with the company, Sharp said that the free trade pact between the two nations, approved last year, can be a model for the proposed military deal.
Sharp and Prior stressed the need for a precise strategy to maximize Washington's partnerships with its key allies like South Korea to deal with "severely stretched U.S. military capabilities" amid hefty defense budget cuts.
"Once a country that needed and received aid, South Korea now contributes to other nations' growth and security while still facing an increasingly belligerent foe to its north," they said.
South Korea, however, constantly finds it difficult to purchase advanced U.S. military equipment, for example, the Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicle, due to many procedural, congressional and price-increase setbacks, they said.
"One argument against selling -- selling, mind you, not giving -- the best equipment to the South Koreans is the fear that cutting-edge technology will be reverse-engineered and lost to a potential commercial competitor," they pointed out. "If the U.S. defense policy is not changed, countries like South Korea will procure what they need elsewhere, hurting U.S. employment and driving up the unit cost the Pentagon pays for systems it buys for itself."