Anchor: South Korea and the U.S. launched a second round of negotiations last week on how much each side should pay next year for the stationing of American troops on the Korean Peninsula. The U.S. is said to be expecting South Korea to pay more than five times what it's paying this year, including costs for strategic asset deployments.
Our Bae Joo-yon has more.

Report: The U.S. may be aiming to have South Korea pay it every time key American strategic assets are deployed on or near the Korean Peninsula, including B-52 bombers, a pair of which flew near the peninsula last week.

At U.S.-South Korea defense cost-sharing talks last week in Hawaii, the U.S. apparently demanded South Korea cover significant expenses potentially linked to peninsular defense, including the deployment of strategic assets.

This is according to a diplomatic source familiar with the discussions, who added that the U.S. side stressed that increasing South Korea’s share in defense costs is inevitable. 

Though the source stopped short of elaborating on exact figures, he said the U.S. has taken on a standard that’s different from the currently applied defense cost-sharing convention, suggesting that related defense cost negotiations will be bumpy.

U.S. President Donald Trump consistently opines that stationing troops abroad, including on the Korean Peninsula, has been too costly for the U.S. 

Guy Snodgrass, who served as former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis's speechwriter and chief of communications, said in a memoir published Tuesday that during a Pentagon briefing in January 2018, Trump had said maintaining a military presence in South Korea is a bad bargain. 

The U.S. president then said it would be an "okay deal" if South Korea pays 60 billion dollars annually.

The U.S.' pursuit of greater Korean cost contributions is expected to generate controversy, as the unused and reserve funds of U.S. Forces Korea amount to some hundreds of billions of won. 

There is also no clause in the current cost-sharing framework that allows South Korea to pay for the deployment of American strategic assets. 

South Korea is paying one-point-38 trillion won this year for the upkeep of U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula, but the U.S. is reportedly seeking as much as five billion dollars, or almost six trillion won, next year. 
Bae Joo-yon, KBS World Radio News.