"美국방부 주한미군 예산안 45억달러"…韓에 다 부담하란 얘기? The U.S. Defense Department has released the estimated cost of maintaining U.S. troops in Korea.
The estimate came to nearly 4.5 billion U.S. dollars, which may explain where President Trump's reported demands for five billion dollars came from.
Our Eum Ji-young has more.
The Pentagon says it costs roughly 4.5 billion U.S. dollars for the U.S. army's presence in South Korea, based on the Defense Department estimates for 2020, which were drawn up in March and released on Tuesday local time.
According to the estimates, the cost of maintaining military personnel was about 2.1 billion dollars, the cost for operations and maintenance stood at roughly 2.2 billion, and family housing in South Korea cost about 140 million dollars.
These, along with other revolving costs for special-purposes, brought the total to around 4.46 billion dollars.
Sources say, this figure suggests why President Donald Trump reportedly asks Seoul to pay 5 billion dollars or about 5 times more than the previous year for the Special Measure Agreement on cost-sharing to maintain a U.S. military presence in South Korea.
The U.S. government regularly renegotiates the burden-sharing deal with its allies and the 2019 agreement required South Korea to contribute 893 million dollars.
Sources also say President Trump reportedly threatened to withdraw U.S. troops from its allies if their annual contributions do not meet the demand.
However, according to CNN and the Washington Post, the reporting on the $4.5 billion price tag "came out of thin air", forcing Department of Defense officials to find justifications for the figure that President Trump is demanding.
Sources say as U.S. allies are already making substantial contributions, they are not likely to agree to such a sharp rise in costs unless there is a legitimate justification.
Eum Ji-young, Arirang News.
#Pentagon #cost #SouthKorea
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