A senior South Korean official says US military forces in his country are not subject to negotiations between North Korea and the United States because they are a matter for the US-South Korean alliance
US President Donald Trump said after his historic summit in Singapore with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un on Tuesday he would stop "expensive, provocative" war games with the South.
About 28,500 US troops are stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty that left the two Koreas technically still at war.
"Let me be clear. There has been no discussions and no change in position on the matter of the issue of US troops in South Korea," the high-level official in South Korea's presidential office said on Friday.
The official also said there had been discussions between North Korea and the US before Tuesday's summit about completing an "early" denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.
The official, who declined to be identified, said the US-North Korea summit "jump-started" stalled negotiations for denuclearisation and hoped South Korea would contribute to speeding up the process.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is charged by Trump with leading follow-up negotiations, said the United States hoped to achieve "major disarmament" by North Korea within the next 2-1/2 years.
Tough sanctions would remain on North Korea until its complete denuclearisation, Pompeo said, apparently contradicting the North's view that the process agreed at this week's summit would be phased and reciprocal.
However, expectations of trade with North Korea have helped revive property prices in the Chinese city of Dandong, which borders North Korea.
