China News Service, April 29. According to reports from the Korean media, on issues related to the sharing of defense costs between South Korea and the United States, South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Jing and the 28th said that the South Korean government will strive to reach a reasonable agreement with the United States that can be approved by the South Korean Congress Horizontal agreement.
South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Jing and 28 attended the policy questioning meeting of the Special Committee on the Budget of the South Korean Congress, and gave a positive answer to the question of whether the 13% increase plan was rejected by US President Trump.
She said that the increase of 13% year-on-year in the defense of the US military in Korea is actually the highest amount that the ROK can afford.
From September 2019, South Korea and the United States launched the 11th defense fee sharing agreement negotiation, but after seven rounds of negotiations, the two sides did not reach an agreement until March this year. The 10th Korea-US defense fee sharing agreement expired at the end of last year.
According to previous reports, in recent years, the United States has been pressing South Korea to increase the proportion of defense costs sharing. In 2019, South Korea ’s defense costs for US troops stationed in South Korea amounted to 1.0389 trillion won (approximately US $ 924 million), an increase of 8.2% from 2018. The South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs has repeatedly stated that the South Korean side insisted on reaching an agreement in a "fair and reasonable" manner within the framework of the existing agreement during the negotiations.
Since South Korea and the United States have not reached agreement on a special agreement on the sharing of defense costs, the US Army Command in South Korea stated on April 1, 2020 that some Korean officers and soldiers in the US Army will enter unpaid leave from that day.