South Korea will have to embrace an increase in its share of the cost of American troops stationed in the country if the incoming US administration makes such a demand, Seoul's arms procurement chief said Monday.
Chang Myoung-jin, head of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration, made the remark during a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington amid keen attention as to whether President-elect Donald Trump would put into action his campaign pledge to have allies pay up.
"My basic thought about that is just that if, and this may be a big if, President-elect Trump and his administration, when it comes to the alliance with ROK, of course the campaign's rhetoric has been toward that direction, and if there is a huge demand for more burden on the part of the ROK, I think Korea will inevitably have to embrace that," Chang said.
Chang also called for more spending to upgrade South Korea's weapons systems to cope better with the ever-growing threats from North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
"The current weapons system that we already have in place will have to be maintained continuously and, on top of that, whatever that is lacking in our current weapons system will have to be complemented and enhanced, and whatever has been aging will have to be replaced," he said.
Chang also said that South Korea's total government budget for next year is about 400 trillion won or US$400 billion, and about 10 percent of that, or some $40 billion, is set aside for defense. Of the total defense budget, $12 billion is earmarked for strengthening defense capability, he said.
He said more spending should be made for national defense even if it means cutting the welfare budget.
"To have a lot of defense budget secured will be all good.
However, it will mean that we will have to cut back on other budgets, which will inevitably invite a lot of resistance. If that ever happens, the ROK government will place ourselves in a dilemma but our focus and priority will have to be putting first priority on defense," Chang said. (Yonhap)
