Seoul to set up team for defense-cost talks with US

By Yi Whan-woo

South Korea will form a negotiating team by the end of this month to discuss with the United States how to share the cost of American troops stationed here, foreign ministry officials said Thursday.

They said South Korean Ambassador to Sri Lanka Chang Won-sam will lead the Seoul delegation for the defense cost-sharing talks.

Chang is expected to be officially appointed next week.

He will begin developing strategies once his team is formed and other issues are finalized, such as securing an office, according to foreign ministry officials.

The negotiations will decide Seoul’s share of the cost of stationing the 28,000 members of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) for 2019 through 2023.

Seoul and the U.S. hold talks on defense cost-sharing every five years under the Special Measures Agreement (SMA).

The talks are likely to begin in 2018 as the U.S. also needs to choose its top negotiator and make preparations, although the two sides may hold preliminary meetings this year.

Under the last SMA in 2014, Seoul paid about half the cost -- 944.1 billion won ($847.4 million) in 2016, 932 billion won in 2015 and 920 billion won in 2014.

Seoul’s outlay covers the salaries of South Korean employees at U.S. bases, South Korean contractors and service agents, military construction, logistics procurements and maintenance and munitions storage.

Meanwhile, analysts speculated that Seoul’s costs may rise to more than 50 percent.

They said U.S. President Donald Trump, as part of his “America first” policy, has been demanding South Korea pay more, while Seoul argued that its share is actually higher because it has been covering additional expenses.

President Moon Jae-in said he and Trump agreed on sharing “reasonable” levels of the defense costs during their summit in Seoul Tuesday.

The press release by the two allies Wednesday had a slight change to that wording. It stated that Moon and Trump acknowledged the “desire for equitable cost sharing of United States military forces stationed in the Republic of Korea.”

Analysts speculated that the word “equitable” indicated that Trump, although he reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to the Seoul-Washington alliance, was still not satisfied with South Korea’s role.

“The word equitable hints at Washington’s willingness to raise Seoul’s share of the defense cost to exactly 50 percent or higher,” Korea Defense Network President Shin In-kyun said.

When asked about South Korea paying 92 percent of the $10 billion to relocate the USFK headquarters and building Camp Humphreys, Trump said the U.S. also “actually spent some of that money.”

“And, as you know, that money was spent, for the most part, to protect South Korea, not to protect the United States,” he said during a joint press conference with Moon Tuesday.

The analysts said the defense cost-sharing talks could influence Seoul’s efforts for an early takeover of wartime operational control (OPCON) from Washington.