Trump mulls troop reduction in ROK

Pentagon told to prepare options for partial withdrawal, says report

WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump has ordered the Pentagon to prepare options for reducing the number of US troops in the Republic of Korea, The New York Times reported on Thursday, citing several people briefed on the deliberations.

Reduced United States troop levels are not intended to be a bargaining chip in Trump's planned summit in late May or early June with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea top leader Kim Jong-un about Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program, the Times said.

The officials said, however, that a peace treaty between the countries could diminish the need for the 23,500 US soldiers currently stationed on the peninsula, the newspaper said.

A full withdrawal of US troops was unlikely, the officials said, according to the paper.

But a US National Security Council official told a visiting ROK official in Washington via telephone the report was false, the ROK presidential office said in a statement.

The White House and Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Trump has said the US should consider reducing the number of troops in the ROK unless the ROK shoulders more of the cost.

Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, before taking office as US secretary of state, met Kim last month and reported the DPRK leader was not demanding the withdrawal of all US forces as a precondition for a summit with Trump.

The ROK said on Wednesday the issue of US troops stationed in the country was unrelated to any future peace treaty with the DPRK and that US forces should stay even if such an agreement is signed.

Meanwhile, Chung Euiyong, top national security adviser for ROK President Moon Jae-in, is currently in the US ahead of the summit between Trump and Kim, local media reported on Friday citing the ROK's presidential Blue House.

An unidentified official told local reporters that Chung made a closed-door visit to the US at the request of the US National Security Council to discuss the summit.

The visit was not made open beforehand to the media at the request of the US side, according to the official.

The official said Chung was likely to discuss a "big deal" with his US counterpart John Bolton regarding the meeting, aimed at helping to resolve the Korean Peninsula's nuclear issue.

The venue of the summit is also likely to be discussed during Chung's trip, the official added.

Chung's visit came a week after Moon and Kim held the third-ever inter-Korean summit at the border village of Panmunjom.

Days before their meeting, Chung visited Washington. Kim is forecast to meet with Trump in May or early June, but the location and the exact date for the first-ever DPRKUS summit has yet to be determined.

Panmunjom recently emerged as one of candidate venues for the talks.

Moon and Kim agreed to complete denuclearization and the change of the current armistice agreement into a peace treaty by the end of this year.

The Korean Peninsula remains technically at war as the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice.

Reuters - Xinhua