Photo : YONHAP News
U.S. Republican presidential nominee and former president Donald Trump said if he were currently in office, South Korea would be paying ten billion U.S. dollars, or about 13 trillion won, a year in defense cost sharing to station American troops on the Korean Peninsula.
At an event co-hosted by the Economic Club of Chicago and Bloomberg on Tuesday, Trump said South Korea would be happy to shoulder the amount, calling the country a “money machine.”
Trump’s remarks came after the allies recently concluded negotiations for a new five-year cost-sharing deal known as the Special Measures Agreement(SMA). Under the agreement, Seoul will pay one-point-52 trillion won, or around one-point-one billion dollars, a year in 2026, up eight-point-three percent from 2025. The cost sharing will rise annually in line with the Consumer Price Index through 2030.
Emphasizing that the U.S. protects South Korea from North Korea’s security threats, such as its nuclear capabilities, Trump claimed that he had gotten along with the North’s leader Kim Jong-un during his presidency.
Trump also referred to Pyongyang’s demolition of sections of roads that linked the two Koreas earlier in the day, falsely stating that Seoul has been cut off on its land routes stretching as far north as Russia and China via the North.