SEOUL
\nThe United States and South Korea on Friday agreed on a new five-year plan on sharing the cost of keeping American troops in South Korea, South Korea\u2019s foreign ministry and the US Department of Statement said.
\nFor 2026, the nations agreed to raise defense cost by 8.3 percent to 1.52 trillion won ($1.13 billion), South Korea\u2019s foreign ministry said in a statement.
\nSeoul and Washington launched the talks earlier than usual in what was seen as a bid to conclude the negotiations before the US election in November.
\nLee Tae-woo, South Korea\u2019s chief negotiator, and Linda Specht, the top US negotiator for talks on defense cost sharing with Korea, finalized the new deal after eight rounds of talks that began in April, held just before the existing deals were due to expire next year.
\nSome 28,500 American troops are stationed in South Korea as part of efforts to deter nuclear-armed North Korea.
\nSouth Korea began shouldering the costs of US deployments, used to fund local labor, the construction of military installations and other logistics support, in the early 1990s.
\nDonald Trump, the Republican nominee in the November election, had during his presidency accused South Korea, a key Asian ally, of \u201cfree-riding\u201d on US military might, and demanded that it pay as much as $5 billion a year for the US deployment.
\nDuring his presidency, both sides had struggled for months to make progress, before reaching a deal with his successor Joe Biden, when Seoul agreed to increase its contribution by 13.9 percent, the biggest annual rise in nearly two decades.
\nThe cost sharing rise for 2026 compares with the average annual increase of 6.2 percent for the past five years, to factor in higher maintenance costs and additional local staff, Seoul\u2019s foreign ministry said.
\nFor 2027-2030, they agreed to use the Consumer Price Index as a reference and work to make sure the annual increase does not exceed five percent, it said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SEOUL The United States and South Korea on Friday agreed on a new five-year plan on sharing the cost of keeping American troops in South Korea, South Korea\u2019s foreign ministry and the US Department of Statement said. For 2026, the nations agreed to raise defense cost by 8.3 percent to 1.52 trillion won ($1.13 billion), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":435417,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-435399","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n