Military review exposes US-South Korea tensions A day after South Korea's biggest military parade in a decade, its defence minister joined his US counterpart in declaring the two countries" alliance "stronger than ever before." Yet behind this week's show of might and solidarity, the allies were debating a subject that exposes Seoul's insecurity about its military capabilities, and which threatens to aggravate unhappiness in Washington about South Korea's contribution to the costs of its own defence. The US has 28,500 troops in South Korea, a key deployment in a region where it is seeking to consolidate its influence, and wartime operational control over the joint forces is due to transfer from the US to South Korea in 2015. But this plan will now be reviewed by a joint working group, it was decided at a bilateral meeting on Wednesday that concluded a four-day visit to South Korea by US defence secretary Chuck Hagel. Washington's agreement to the review came nearly three months after a request from the South Korean government. The planned handover of control to Seoul - which has already been postponed once - was agreed in 2007 on the initiative of a liberal South Korean government seen as having a relatively cool relationship with Washington. But subsequent administrations have sought to push back the transfer, fearing that it could loosen the US commitment to the alliance and embolden North Korea. "The North Korean regime is not changing in terms of its traditional strategy of driving a wedge between South Korea and the US," says Kim Tae-hyo, former national security adviser to Lee Myung-bak, who left the presidency in February. So the South Korean defence department still has some fears. Mr Hagel stressed his open mind on the timing of the handover, underscoring that it must be "conditions-based." But Seoul's unwillingness to take an expanded role in the alliance has fed complaints in Washington that the US is shouldering too much of the responsibility of defending South Korea. A report in April by the US Senate's armed services committee noted that South Korean contributions to the non-personnel costs of the US presence in the country rose by just 6 per cent to $765m in the four years to 2012. US contributions rose 85 per cent to $1.1bn over the same period. "It is . . . critical that the growth in South Korea's contributions keep pace with US costs," the report said, while noting that "since 2009, that has not been the case." Several rounds of talks in recent months to replace the current burden-sharing agreement, which expires this year, have not yet reached an agreement. Concerns about the costs of the presence in South Korea are exacerbated by broader financial pressure on the US defence department, which may need to find spending cuts worth as much as $1tn over the next decade. There are voices suggesting that the US should not consider the delay request because it would be letting them off the hook Evans Revere, Brookings Institution Meanwhile, South Korea has a longstanding target of spending 3 per cent of its gross domestic product on defence, but the figure has been below that level since 1998 and stood at 2.7 per cent last year, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Critics in Washington view Seoul's nervousness about taking over Opcon as a reflection of its insufficient investment in its military, says Evans Revere at the Brookings Institution, formerly a senior Asia official in the US state department. "There are voices suggesting that the US should not consider the delay request because it would be letting them off the hook," he says. We really need South Korea to pick up its share of the burden. Yet US hopes for a major increase in South Korean defence spending "are not necessarily attainable," warns Bruce Bennett, an analyst at the Rand Corporation. Park Geun-hye, South Korea's president, is struggling to meet ambitious welfare expenditure promises made during her election campaign, as she faces stuttering tax revenue amid disappointing economic growth. The 2014 budget, unveiled last week, scaled back some of those pledges - but the social spending platform still drove a forecast 4.6 per cent increase in government expenditure. By contrast, defence spending is set to rise by only 4.2 per cent. Yet despite these financial pressures, analysts in Seoul argue that a bigger factor in the South Korean government's hesitation is the fear that the control transfer could encourage further provocations from North Korea, which appears to be forging ahead with its nuclear programme under the young leader Kim Jong Un. "South Korean people in general think we need to take the Opcon transfer," says Park Chang-kwoun, an analyst at the Korea Institute for Defence Analyses. South Korea has improved its military capability . . . as a sovereign state, we need to take control of our security. But the North Korean threat has been enhanced. This is a very critical period. Additional reporting by Geoff Dyer in Washington