The Fifth Future South Korea-U.S. Alliance Meeting

South Korea and the United States have continued the 5th round of ‘Future Korea-U.S. Alliance Policy Initiative Meeting’ at the conference room of the U.S. Marine Headquarters at the U.S. Forces Yongsan Garrison in Seoul for three consecutive days, however ended up with failure to meet a consensus on detailed forces relocation plan yesterday.

The two sides accordingly postponed reporting the results of the meeting until October 9 and made the last attempt to tune their different views on the issue.

Concerning the delay, a Defense Ministry official said, “Both sides have a large gap in reference to some passages in the articles of comprehensive treaty for relocating Yongsan Garrison, which will replace the Memorandum of Agreement(MOA) and Memorandum of Understanding(MOU). ”

Lead by Deputy National Defense Minister Cha Young-koo and Richard Lawless, the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, the two parties originally planned to wrap up the future South Korea-U.S. alliance meeting on Wednesday, and to sign a treaty as an official procedure during the Korea-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) in mid-November in Seoul.

Meanwhile, the two sides have undergone several working-level talks and reached an agreement that the remaining size of land at the Yongsan post, after repositioning to Osan area and Pyung-taek area in Gyeonggi Province in 2006, would be 160,000~240,000 pyong, which falls to 20-30 percent of the current total base size. Relocation expense covered by South Korea is known to be agreed on USD $3 billion.

Sang-Ho Yun ysh1005@donga.com