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The defense meeting also comes at a time when China has expressed concerns about the strengthening alliance between Seoul and Washington.
At the military talks in Seoul, U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said his country would not pull out any additional troops, reaffirming "the solid U.S. commitment to the defense of South Korea."
"I reaffirmed the discussions and commitments made at Camp David in terms of the U.S. troop level," Gates said, referring to April's Seoul-Washington summit that produced an agreement on upgrading the half-century old military alliance into a "21st-century strategic alliance."
Under the summit agreement, the two countries plan to unveil a blueprint for the strategic alliance based on "freedom and democracy, human rights and the principle of a market economy" when President George W. Bush makes a return visit to Seoul, which is likely to happen in July.
The new alliance vision would include a call for a bigger role of the alliance beyond the Korean peninsula to tackle global issues, such as anti-terrorism and the spread of democracy, according to diplomatic sources.
"We will keep our commitments made at Camp David and we will ensure we will maintain at least the same capabilities we have here, or perhaps be able to enhance them," Gates said.
In a separate press release, Seoul's Defense Ministry said the two defense chiefs "expressed a shared perception of the need for stronger cooperation in order to develop the ROK (South Korea)-U.S. Alliance into a 21st Century Strategic Alliance, and agreed to exert a joint effort for the creative development of the ROK-U.S. relationship."
"The maintenance of the current U.S. Forces Korea troop level on which the two summits agreed greatly contributes to the enhancement of the ROK-U.S. combined readiness posture," it said.
The United States has reduced its troops in South Korea to 28,500 from 37,000 as part of Washington's global troop realignment plan. The number was to be further downsized to 25,000 by the end of this year, triggering security jitters in South Korea, which still faces a threat from nuclear-armed North Korea and its 1.2-million-strong army.
Fueling Seoul's security concerns, the United Sates plans to transfer its wartime operational control of South Korean armed forces back to Seoul by April 2012.
Gates said his country would freeze the number of U.S. troops at the current level, dismissing news reports about a U.S. plan to move out a battalion of Apache attack helicopters from Korea to be deployed in Afghanistan.
"As I indicated earlier, as we go forward we will not take any actions without full consultation with our Korean ally," Gates said, stressing that Washington's security commitment to South Korea will remain unchanged after the transfer of the wartime control.
The two defense chiefs also attended a ceremony for a change of command for American troops in South Korea. In an address at the ceremony held at the U.S. military headquarters in downtown Seoul, new commander U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Walter L. Sharp vowed to tighten the military alliance with South Korea.
"As an alliance we must be prepared to fight to win," said Sharp, who also heads the U.N. command and the combined U.S.-South Korean forces command.
Gates was in Seoul on the final leg of an Asian trip that included stops in Guam, Singapore and Thailand. He left South Korea later Tuesday through Seoul's main streets, occupied by tens of thousands of protesters opposed to the planned import of U.S. beef. They include activists who chanted anti-American slogans, reminiscent of the anti-U.S. protests that swept South Korea in 2002.
With the growing protests, the popularity of President Lee Myung-bank has plunged to less than 20 percent, undermining the mandate of the pro-U.S. leader.
Just weeks after taking office in February as the country's first conservative leader in a decade, Lee rushed to visit Washington and Tokyo, where he reached accords on stronger ties, raising concerns in China.
Just ahead of his meeting with Bush, Lee agreed to resume U.S beef imports, which was widely considered here as a political concession to win stronger U.S. security commitments.
Coinciding with Lee's visit to China last week, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang called the South Korea-U.S. military alliance "a historical relic and a leftover of the Cold War," saying the alliance "cannot resolve security issues of the contemporary world."
South Korea and the United States signed a mutual defense treaty just after the end of the 1950-53 Korean War to deter another war on the Korean peninsula, which still remains technically in a state of war as the armed conflict ended without a peace treaty. The inter-Korean border is the world's last Cold War frontier with nearly 2 million troops on both sides.
