ULTIMATUM: When Defense Secretary Mark Esper welcomes his South Korean counterpart Kyeong-doo Jeong to the Pentagon this afternoon there will be heartfelt expressions of the unbreakable bonds between the two countries and America’s “ironclad” commitment to defending the South against the North.

But underlying the bonhomie is a simmering dispute over the Trump administration’s demands that Korea vastly increase the annual payments to U.S. to reimburse the Pentagon for the cost of maintaining more than 28,000 U.S. troops on South Korea soil — from the current $870 million to roughly $5 billion.

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