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On July 27, in commemoration of the 67th anniversary of the Korean War’s armistice, president Dongsuk Kim of KAGC penned an op-ed with Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The piece was published by Chosun Ilbo, the oldest daily publication in Korea where it boasts one of the largest publication volumes. Below is the English version of the piece:

Today, July 27, marks the 67th anniversary of the Armistice of the Korean War. This is a time to commemorate the brave Korean, American, and allied soldiers, sailors and flyers who made the ultimate sacrifice in the cause of democracy — and a time to celebrate the strength and endurance of the US-Korea alliance.

Our alliance with Korea is critical to deter adversaries, provide stability to the region, and endows U.S. forces in the region with crucial leverage that enhances our nation’s security, extends our values, and enables our prosperity. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Indo-Pacific Strategy Report refers to the U.S.-South Korea alliance as “the linchpin of peace and prosperity in Northeast Asia, as well as the Korean Peninsula.”

Of course, the shared values that animate the US-Korea relationship go far beyond our military alliance. Korea’s remarkable economic growth over the past seventy years, in partnership with and nurtured by U.S. assistance and support, from a war-devasted agricultural economy to one of the world’s leaders in microelectronics, computers, telecommunications, automobiles, and pharmaceuticals and medical technology is one of the world’s great success stories. Today the United States could well benefit from taking a page from South Korea’s playbook on dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. And the ties that bind the Korean and American people together, including the tens of thousands of Korean-Americans in our home state of New Jersey, speak to our mutual cultural enrichment and to a shared desire for a future that is free, democratic, and inclusive.

Yet today the Korea-American alliance is under pressure, both from North Korea, which is to be expected, but, more troublingly, from within as our nations remain at loggerheads over burden-sharing arrangements.

A fair and mutually-beneficial Special Measures Agreement (SMA) for burden sharing, one that reflects the realities of the twenty-first century and does right by the thousands of Korean nationals who work at U.S. Forces Korea military base, is an essential element of strengthening a strong and durable US-ROK alliance. Yet the current stalemate in extending SMA belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the value of our alliance with the Republic of Korea and the importance of the U.S. strategic position in the Indo-Pacific, and is almost-guaranteed to fail.

The U.S.-Korea relationship provides unique benefits and is of critical importance to the United States, enabling a cost-effective and strategically-vital forward-deployed posture and presence in the region. Yet the current U.S. negotiating position in the renegotiation talks appears to contradict these key principles and undermines our enduring commitment to the Republic of Korea.

While it is certainly true that there are significant areas where the Republic of Korea should make a greater contribution to its own defense and to the alliance, it is important to recognize what they are already doing. In fact, following the conclusion of the 2019 agreement where the Republic of Korea agreed to increase its contribution to approximately $925 million for one year, the Department of Defense testified before Congress that the Trump Administration viewed the current burden-sharing agreement was fair and mutually beneficial.

The United States and the Republic of Korea face shared challenges. Inconsistencies in our policy towards North Korea mean that we continue to face a grave and growing threat presented by North Korea’s on-going nuclear, ballistic, missile, and conventional military programs, and we must work together to forge a unified approach to China’s growing regional assertiveness. Achieving a fair and mutually beneficial SMA is essential to these ends.

Today, as we commemorate the anniversary of the Armistice and contemplate how much the United States and Korea have accomplished together, and how much more we can yet accomplish, an agreed approach to burden-sharing should bind us closer together, not serve as a wedge that drives away our Korean friend, partner and ally.

Bob Menendez represents New Jersey in the U.S. Senate, where he is the ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee. Dongsuk Kim is the president of the Korean American Grassroots Conference, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that represents the largest nationwide network of Korean American voters.