After months of failed talks, the Pentagon confirmed on Wednesday that they have agreed to a deal on the fate of South Korean workers at US military bases. The workers were laid off indefinitely by the US in late March over cost-sharing questions.
Under the new deal, South Korea will pay 100% of the costs of the 4,000 laid off workers to work for the US for the rest of the year. This is meant to provide more time for the two sides to work on a long-term deal on cost-sharing.
The two nations have worked on cost-sharing for months now, after a previous deal was scrapped by the US and Trump demanded vastly more South Korean funding. South Korea has so far been rejected on offers to compromise, and no deal is reached.
The US laying off those workers was seen as negotiating leverage at the time, but with no deal imminent, they appear to have decided getting South Korea to pay the workers entirely for the rest of the year, meaning the US gets their work for free, is a good deal for now.
SLAVE LABOUR?
Stopgap interim budgets tend to become permanent. Trump bullied the Koreans into working for us for free for a year… when the year is up, workers will still need to be paid if anyone wants them to keep working, and the US will still be a warmongering bully.
And oh yeah, what about security? That’s what bases are supposedly about. The Koreans telling us to get lost would make them vastly safer, no longer being the locals who would be the first to die by the millions when the US starts a war with N Korea, China, Russia, or all of the above at once.
Increasing the cost Koreans must bear makes it more likely the US is asked to leave.
So, make up your mind.
SK needs to find other work for those people, and to exercise more control over what, exactly, they are doing starting immediately.
Humiliation continues.
Is Trump clipping coupons for foreign policy now?
The Korean economy was not untouched by COVID-19; keeping people paid and employed will be a priority.