hankyoreh

Civic groups hold a press conference outside the Blue House condemning the US’ unreasonable demands to raise South Korea’s financial contributions to housing US troops on Oct. 23, 2019. (Yonhap News)

With some 4,000 South Korean employees of the US military on unpaid leave since Apr. 1 because of the two countries’ deadlocked defense cost-sharing negotiations, the South Korean government is pondering the idea of paying 70% of their wages. The government has notified US Forces Korea (USFK) that it will be paying the wages of the furloughed workers for the time being and that it means to use its eventual cost-sharing contribution to compensate itself for that cost.

“The plan we’re working on right now is for the government to pay the wages of the furloughed workers initially and then subtract that amount from the personnel funding we pay the US military once the cost-sharing negotiations are completed. We’ve notified the US that we’ll be paying the wages, and they didn’t raise an objection,” a South Korean government official said during a phone call with the Hankyoreh on Apr. 26.

“The USFK’s South Korean employees aren’t allowed to enroll in employment insurance. We’re looking into the idea of paying 70% of the wages of the furloughed workers, which would line up with the standards of employment insurance,” the official added.

Since both the ruling and opposition parties support passing a special act to help the furloughed workers, a solution is likely to be imminent. Both the Democratic Party and the United Future Party submitted related bills on Apr. 24.

By Seong Yeon-cheol and Kim So-youn, staff reporter

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