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US Deputy Assistant Secretary for Korea and Japan Marc Knapper. (Baek So-ah, staff photographer)

A US State Department official said on Oct. 28 that the omission of language about maintaining US Forces Korea at their present level from the joint statement resulting from the 52nd South Korea-US Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) was not intended to threaten South Korea in the two countries’ ongoing defense cost-sharing negotiations.

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Korea and Japan Marc Knapper said that when the phrase in question had been dropped, it was not “meant to be a threat or a way to twist Korea’s arm.” Knapper was replying to a moderator during a videoconference held about prospects and challenges in the South Korea-US alliance, which was organized by the Sejong Institute and the Heritage Foundation on the morning of Oct. 28.

Knapper dismissed speculation raised in some quarters that the deletion of this language from the joint statement could lead to a reduction of American troops in South Korea, commenting that the issue had received more attention than was warranted and that people were reading too much into it.

“It was not a message directly aimed at Korea but rather was meant to reflect a broader, worldwide assessment that’s underway by the Pentagon,” Knapper explained.

“We remain frustrated that we don’t have an agreement, but we are hopeful that we can get something done,” Knapper said, while noting that the two countries are continuing negotiations aimed at updating their cost-sharing agreement.

Negotiations for this year’s 11th agreement neared a deal back in April, but they’ve been stalled since US President Donald Trump rejected the draft agreement.

“I’d like to emphasize that we’ve never discussed cutting back American troops on the Korean Peninsula during the cost-sharing negotiations. The omission of the language about maintaining American troops reflected the US government’s execution of a global policy,” said Ko Yun-ju, director-general at the Foreign Ministry’s North American Affairs bureau, during the videoconference on Wednesday.

When asked if South Korea and the US disagreed about South Korea’s planned recovery of wartime operational control (OPCON) of its troops, the two officials both said there was no disagreement.

Ko said that while it wouldn’t be easy to stick to the planned timetable because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the two countries were working to meet the agreed-upon conditions so as to accelerate the OPCON transfer. But Knapper stressed that the two countries couldn’t advance to the next stage until those conditions were satisfied.

By Kim Ji-eun, staff reporter

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