SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.S. military will put nearly 9,000 South Korean workers on unpaid leave from April in the absence of an agreement on the sharing of costs of maintaining 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea, it has told the government.

The allies are at odds over how much of the cost South Korea should shoulder to accommodate U.S. Forces Korea (USFK), a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

Negotiations have made little progress even after the previous deal, the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), expired at the end of 2019.

The workers, who are mostly employed at U.S. bases, were put on unpaid leave in April, which led to a temporary agreement in June to let South Korea fund some 4,000 of them....