Waltz's "Tough Talk" preview...Campbell "pay enough for South Korea's defense"

Waltz "Making the most of the alliance to reduce U.S. burden"

Cho Tae-yeol "Reaches the highest level of cooperation in the second Trump administration"

[Anchor]
Concerns over an increase in the cost of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea are growing as the second Trump administration's diplomatic and security lines are filled with people demanding more pressure on the alliance.

A senior Biden administration official said South Korea is paying sufficient and generous defense costs and called for a close alliance to continue.

This is Washington correspondent Kwon Jun-ki.

[Reporter]
Mike Waltz, the second Trump administration's foreign affairs and security chief, has insisted on increasing allies' spending more to reduce the U.S. security burden.

He also stressed the need for "tough dialogue" to make allies more burdened.

[Mike Waltz / Trump's nominee for national security adviser (October 29): You can be an ally, a friend, but you have to be able to have tough conversations. Although he has begged the NATO alliance to share the burden of defense spending, spending 2% GDP is not an unreasonable target.

The Biden administration, which is leaving in two months, is concerned about the possibility of a change in the alliance policy of the second Trump administration.

Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, who has been in charge of Asian policy, advised that if the United States does not want to lose its influence in the Indo-Pacific, it will have to continue trilateral cooperation between South Korea, the U.S. and Japan.

At the same time, he stressed that South Korea and Japan are fully paying for their defense expenses.

[U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell: Both Japan and South Korea recently wrapped up very generous and generous negotiations on defense contributions.]

Campbell said he recommends that Yoon Suk Yeol meet with Trump early on to convince him of South Korea's importance as an ally.

Former Foreign Minister Park Jin said that Trump was the first to push for dialogue between South Korea, the U.S., and Japan, predicting that trilateral cooperation will continue unchanged.

[Park Jin / Former Minister of Foreign Affairs: I remember it was the Trump administration that started talking about trilateral cooperation, so the trilateral partnership and cooperation will certainly continue.]

Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yeol emphasized that South Korea's defense spending as a percentage of GDP is the fourth largest among U.S. allies and that investment in the U.S. is the highest.

Therefore, I was confident that even in the second Trump administration, we would be able to continue to develop the Korea-U.S. alliance and reach the highest level of cooperation.

This is YTN Kwon Jun-ki from Washington.

Photograph: Kang Yeon-oh
Video editing:Juyeon Lee