U.S., South Korea fail to reach deal to share costs for American troops

SEOUL, Dec. 28 (UPI) -- The United States is seeking to shorten the duration of the defense cost-sharing deal with South Korea from current five years to one year as President Donald Trump pushes U.S. allies to pay more for shared defense spending, South Korean media reported.

The U.S. and South Korea recently held a meeting to renegotiate the ROK-US Special Measure Agreement, a five-year deal that began in 1991 to share defense spending to maintain some 28,500 troops of U.S. Forces Korea.

At the 10th negotiation, the U.S. suggested that the agreement should be renegotiated every year and South Korea should increase its contribution from $848.8 million to $1.2 billion next year.

South Korean and U.S. negotiators failed to reach an agreement in the negotiation, according to Newsis. The current 2014-2018 agreement expires at the end of this month.

"We continue to discuss and coordinate our stance through diplomatic channels," said a South Korean foreign ministry official said to reporters, according to Yonhap News.

The U.S. Forces Korea has released a notice to South Korean workers at U.S. military bases in South Korea last month, saying that they should go on unpaid leave if they failed to seal the deal before the end of this year, according to Yonhap News.

South Korea's share is used to pay salaries for South Korean workers at U.S. military bases in the country and for construction projects and logistics at U.S. bases.

Trump has called on U.S. allies, including members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and South Korea, to burden more shares of defense spending.

"America shouldn't be doing the fighting for every nation on earth, not being reimbursed in many cases at all. If they want us to do the fighting, they also have to pay a price," Trump said, in his speech to U.S. troops in Iraq on Wednesday. "And sometimes that's also a monetary price, so we're not suckers of the world. We're no longer the suckers, folks. And people aren't looking at us as suckers."