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Updated April 22, 2020


South Korea: Background and U.S. Relations


South Korea (officially the Republic of Korea, or ROK) is
one of the United States' most important strategic and
economic partners in Asia. The U.S.-ROK Mutual Defense
Treaty, signed in 1953 at the end of the Korean War,
commits the United States to help South Korea defend
itself, particularly from North Korea (officially the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK), and the
alliance helps the United States promote its interests in East
Asia and around the globe. ROK troops, for example, have
fought alongside U.S. troops in U.S.-led military conflicts.
Approximately 28,500 U.S. troops are based in the ROK.
The economic relationship is bolstered by the U.S.-South
Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS FTA). South Korea
is the United States' seventh-largest trading partner, and the
United States is South Korea's second-largest trading
partner, behind China.

Policy cooperation between the United States and South
Korea has been inconsistent under the administrations of
Donald Trump and Moon Jae-in. Moon, a progressive, was
elected President in May 2017 after a decade of
conservative rule. Although the two sides generally have
managed to navigate differences, for instance over trade
and North Korea policy, underlying tensions continue to
surface on a range of issues. Most recently, the U.S.-ROK
Special Measures Agreement (SMA) on how to divide
the costs of basing U.S. troops in South Korea expired at
the end of 2019, and subsequent negotiations have failed to
reach a compromise. As a result, about 4,000 South Korean
workers on U.S. bases were furloughed in April 2020. The
Trump Administration has demanded Seoul increase its
payments by 400%, and Trump publicly said it is debatable
whether the U.S. troop presence is in U.S. interests.

South &Korea's COI D-> 19 Resporse
In February 2020, South Korea emerged as the second-
worst COVID-19 affected country, after China. By the end
of March, however, South Koreans largely had slowed the
initial outbreak, and had done so without resorting to large-
scale lockdowns. As of April 22, South Korea was
reporting fewer than 20 new cases a day, with a cumulative
total of over 10,000 infections and over 200 deaths. The
significant reduction in newly reported cases allowed the
government in mid-April to begin relaxing its social
distancing measures.

South Korea managed the initial outbreak with aggressive
testing, contact-tracing, and public communication. South
Korea describes its approach as the three Ts: tracking,
testing, and treatment, including caring for mildly
symptomatic patients in separate facilities away from
families and from hospitals. As of April 21, over 550,000
citizens had been tested for the virus-one of the highest
rate of testing per capita in the world-at over 600 sites,


including pop-up facilities and drive-through sites that
provide rapid results. The government also emphasized
transparency, disseminating information about the virus'
spread, including about possible infections at the
neighborhood level. After a deadly 2015 outbreak of
Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) exposed flaws
in the country's response, South Korea reformed its health
policy by granting the government greater powers to
monitor and track individual patients and to allow private
companies to produce tests rapidly.

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