By Lee Min-hyung
With South Korea and the United States apparently on track to suspend their joint military exercises, a string of bilateral military steps is expected to ensue in exchange for North Korea's sincere steps for denuclearization.
Seoul and Washington are in talks to suspend their annual military drills after U.S. President Donald Trump's historic meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Tuesday. Trump is in a position to make the concession in return for the regime's complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization (CVID).
But the two allied countries still have more military steps to be taken under the precondition that Pyongyang continues to take appropriate steps for peace and denuclearization.
The possible scenarios include a reduction of the number of U.S. troops here. U.S. President Donald Trump expressed his strong willingness to withdraw the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) in a press conference after his summit with Kim.
“I want to get our soldiers out, and I want to bring our soldiers back home,” Trump said after his summit with Kim in Singapore. “But that is not part of the equation right now. I hope it will be eventually.”
This is not the first time for him to outwardly complain about the existence of U.S. troops in South Korea. He has urged South Korea to take more of the financial burden on maintaining the troops here since taking office early last year.
With the North pledging to put an end to military provocation and carry out nuclear disarmament, the two Koreas reached a consensus in April to declare the end of their current technical state of war by the end of the year.
Some critics say this will speed up the potential withdrawal of the USFK in South Korea, as it would remove justifiable reasons for the USFK to be stationed here following the end of the war.
Such a move is seen by the North as the U.S.' sincere step to guaranteeing regime security, as Pyongyang has for decades called the U.S. military readiness in South Korea the biggest stumbling block to peace.
For Trump, the move is also a step in the right direction, as he expressed discomfort for conducting joint military exercises with South Korea.
“The war games are very expensive,” he said. “We paid for a big majority of them, and we fly in bombers from Guam. This is a long time for these big massive planes to be flying to South Korea to practice and then drop bombs and then go back to Guam. I know a lot about airplanes, and it is very expensive.”
Another critical issue to be discussed between Seoul and Washington is the withdrawal of a U.S. anti-missile system.
The deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system here is aimed at monitoring and shooting down Pyongyang's possible missile threats.
But Kim Jong-un told Trump North Korea is destroying a major missile engine testing site, according to Trump.
If the regime keeps its promise and scraps its missile facilities, the regime may urge Seoul and Washington to withdraw THAAD from South Korea.