This comes a week after North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un met with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea for a rare summit where they pledged to sign a peace treaty this year. The two countries have technically been at war since 1953.
The New York Times newspaper said its sources had admitted that a peace deal would diminish the need for the United States to keep a 28,500-strong force in the peninsula, after President Trump complained about the cost of protecting South Korea and Japan.
Earlier, South Korean President Moon Jae-in said that the presence of US forces in South Korea was "a matter for the South Korea-US alliance," dismissing the possibility of withdrawing US troops stationed in the country in the event of signing a peace treaty with North Korea, which would formally put an end to the 1950-1953 Korean War.