Approximately 4,500 of South Koreans who work on U.S. military bases in South Korea were furloughed on April 1, after the Trump administration and South Korea failed to reach a new deal for the Special Measures Agreement (SMA). The largest concern for a lapse in SMA between the two countries is potential damage to the U.S.-ROK alliance and U.S. role in the region. Contributing to the U.S.-ROK alliance is one of KAGC’s core missions, and as such, the developments on this matter affects a wide range of policy priorities of the Korean American community. South Korea is the motherland of roughly two million ethnic Koreans in the United States.
The Special Measures Agreement (SMA), a burden-sharing agreement between two allies, is the mechanism by which the Republic of Korea shares the costs of U.S. forces to defend the Republic of Korea. U.S.-ROK SMA expired at the end of 2019, and subsequent negotiations have failed to reach a compromise. In the last deal, reached in February 2019, South Korea agreed to pay $870 million for the year. The Trump administration has demanded Seoul to increase its payments by 400%, and Trump publicly said it is debatable whether the U.S. troop presence is in U.S. interests. South Korean negotiators reportedly offered a 13% increase in contributions, falling far short of the Trump administration’s recent proposal for a five-fold increase in ROK payments. In addition to the agreement between the executive branches of the two countries, the SMA requires approval by the ROK National Assembly, which is sensitive to the public sentiment that is strongly opposed to meeting the U.S. demand.
“This is an unfortunate day for us. It’s unthinkable. It’s heartbreaking. The partial furlough of [Korean National] employees is not what we envisioned or hoped what would happen,” said General Robert Abrams, the top U.S. commander in Korea. “The furlough is in no way a reflection of their performance, dedication or conduct, but rather due to a lack of a burden sharing agreement [SMA] making programmed funds unavailable.”
As the United States only signed SMA with Japan and South Korea, one popular comparison to that with the Republic of Korea is the SMA between the U.S. and Japan, where about 54,000 American troops are stationed. Unlike the SMA with ROK that is to be negotiated every year, the SMA with Japan is a bilateral agreement, generally covering five years, which has obligated Japan to pay a certain amount for utility and labor costs of U.S. bases and for relocating training exercises away from populated areas. The current SMA covers the years 2016 through 2021, and Japan is contributing ¥189 billion ($1.72 billion) per year under the SMA. According to the U.S. Department of Defense’s report in 2004 (the last year DOD had to report to Congress), Japan provided 74.5% of the U.S. stationing cost, which is higher than the 40% of South Korea (the current estimates are 70% of Japan and 50% of South Korea). In January 2017, Japan’s defense minister Tomomi Inada said that the Japanese portion of the total cost for U.S. forces stationed in Japan in 2015 was more than 86% (¥191 billion, approximately $1.8 billion in dollars).
During the course of the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump contended that Japan (like other U.S. allies) should pay more or face a drawback of U.S. defense commitments. The Trump administration has asked Tokyo to pay roughly four times as much per year in July 2019, when the then-National Security Advisor John Bolton and Matt Pottinger, the National Security Council’s Asia director at the time, delivered the request to Japanese officials during a trip to the region. The Japan-U.S. agreement on cost-sharing over the five-year period through fiscal 2020 will expire at the end of March 2021.
Germany is one of the three countries that host one of the largest U.S. troops at 35,000, falling behind Japan (and just slightly larger than that of the Republic of Korea). It spends about 33% of hosting U.S. troops in the country, but Germany’s payments for U.S. troops are almost entirely in kind — the provision of services or facilities. According to Deutsche Welle (German public broadcaster), Germany paid 243 million Euro ($260 million) over the past 7 years.
Of all U.S. allies, the only two countries that pay for U.S. forces, through a special agreement, are Japan and South Korea. U.S. and South Korea failed to find a compromise for over four months after the expiration of the prior agreement of SMA and how this concludes will be a great litmus test for the future of U.S.-ROK alliance. Top Democratic members of Congress with direct jurisdiction over this matter—Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Senate Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Jack Reed (D-RI), House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel (D-NY) and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA)—all expressed concern in their letter to the administration: “Yet, we are deeply concerned that if we are unable to reach a fair and mutually acceptable agreement on a new SMA soon, then the continued friction will erode the proper functioning of the alliance itself.”