S Korea agrees to improve in share of cost for US troops
South Korea has agreed to a 13.9% increase in its contribution to the price tag on hosting some 28,500 U.S. troops for 2021, the largest annual rise in nearly 2 decades after U.S. calls for greater funding. The increase will need South Korea's contribution this season to 1 1.18 trillion won ($1.03 billion). Former U.S. President Donald Trump had accused South Korea of "free-riding" on U.S. military might and demanded that it pay around $5 billion a year.
"The agreement resolved the longest-ever vacuum that had lasted about a year and 90 days," South Korea's chief negotiator, Jeong Eun-bo, told a televised briefing. "It provided an opportunity to reaffirm the value of the alliance and the need for stable stationing of U.S. Forces Korea."
The six-year Special Measures Agreement with america came after drawn-out negotiations and can boost South Korea's twelve-monthly contribution to the bill for 2022 to 2025 in line with its total annual defence budget increase., which was 5.4% this year, the foreign ministry said in a statement. The pact replaces an arrangement that expired towards the end of 2019, under which South Korea paid about $920 million a year. Both sides decided to freeze South Korea's contribution for 2020, the ministry said.
In the last big upsurge in its contribution, South Korea in 2003 paid 17% a lot more than the previous year, according to data from a defence ministry white paper. On the brand new link between your contribution to the price of maintaining U.S. forces and the defence budget, the ministry said the upsurge in the defence budget was a "reasonable, verifiable indicator" that reflected financial and security capabilities.But Shin Beom-chul, a security expert at the Research Institute for Economy and Society in Seoul, said aligning both issues was a "mistake" for South Korea, one of the world's major defence spenders, and it might bring budget pressure.
About 28,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea to help defend it against North Korea under a treaty of mutual defence signed following the 1950-53 Korean War ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty. The treaty provided the foundation for the stationing of U.S. forces in South Korea, which started paying towards their costs in the first 1990s after rebuilding its war-devastated economy.
With negotiations making little headway following the last pact expired, about half of some 9,000 South Koreans doing work for the U.S. military were located on unpaid leave, prompting both sides to scramble for a stopgap deal to bring them back again to work. Jeong said the accord stipulated that in future, personnel can be obtain existing salaries in the absence of a fresh deal.The workers' union welcomed the agreement, saying it would help ensure stable work conditions. Without it, thousands more personnel could have been forced to take unpaid leave the following month, the union said.
