The U.S. Defense Department is apparently not planning to revise a bilateral agreement between South Korea and the U.S. that outlines the legal guidelines for the 28-thousand U.S. forces stationed in the South.

The nominee for assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific security affairs, Mark Lippert, told a Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday that the U.S. wants to continue flexibility in implementing the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) through the South Korea-U.S. SOFA Joint Committee, rather than revising it.

In South Korea, calls to revise the SOFA have grown in the wake of a series of crimes committed by U.S. soldiers and suspected environmental pollution at U.S. military bases.

Lipperts remarks came in a written response to a question about South Korea’s possible request for negotiations on revising the SOFA. He said the agreement was revised twice in 1991 and 2001, and that Washington and Seoul have made thousands of arrangements to effectively fix the problems with the way the SOFA is implemented.

The two countries will hold a meeting of the joint committee in Seoul next Wednesday.