Stay the Course in Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — What Iraq and Afghanistan taking up the airwaves, it’s easy to forget that for the past 50 years, thousands of American troops have been stationed in South Korea. This commitment is scheduled to decrease in 2012, when the US will hand over wartime operation control of forces back to the Korean military. This gesture is only the latest scale back for the American military in Korea, which has been dialing down its presence over the past decade.

On a day-to-day basis, the slow withdrawal of American forces does not make a big impact on Korea. The troops here have few protective duties; they serve as a “tripwire,” insurance against a possible North Korean attack. However, this tripwire will likely become a vital part of international security in the next few years. North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is a dying man. He has not prepared his 24-year old son and heir, Kim Jong-Un, for succession. Now, the world is stuck with a boy-king who is ill-trained to fend off power-hungry generals bred on Pyongyang’s “military first” policy. Such is the North Korea of nightmares, where nuclear weapons are not a carefully-kept international tease, but a valuable trump card in a close domestic power struggle.

Faced with this situation, it seems absurd that the U.S. military plans to scale back in any way. There are 28,500 American troops in Korea right now, and that is a good price for détente on the peninsula. The peace and stability of Seoul, Tokyo, and Shanghai are of great interest to the United States. To this end, the present deployment is a cheaper solution than attempting North Korean regime change, and more effective than placing sanctions on a government that will let its people starve rather than cooperate.

Just as Americans should recognize the benefits of troops in Korea, so should South Koreans. The public here has often been unreasonably hostile towards the U.S. troop presence. In the 2002 Winter Olympics, after a Korean speed skater was passed over for the gold medal after being judged to have blocked an American skater, there were protests here against American troops. That same year, anti-American sentiment broke out throughout the country after two Korean schoolgirls were accidentally run over by a tank during an American military training exercise. These outbursts of conflict reflect simmering anger among Koreans at the relative weakness of their military, compared to their highly productive economy. Since the end of the Korean War, the South Korean economy has developed enormously. The fact that their military ability remains inadequate is more than a little confusing and embarrassing to them.

But despite their fierce national pride, under the present circumstances, I think it’s possible that South Koreans will discard their stereotypes of American troops and recognize the benefits of their presence, at least until the North Korean regime stabilizes. The Korean border is 40 kilometers from the Seoul metropolitan area, in which half the population of South Korea lives. Across it, North Korea has around 1.2 million troops—the fifth largest land force in the world, because the Kim regime prioritizes bullets over bread. South Korea presently spends 3 percent of its GDP on defense, and without American troops that number would certainly go up, at precipitous cost to the Korean economy.

And, in fact, to some degree such recognition is already happening—in the past three weeks, legislators of the ruling Grand National Party have joined the traditionally less Washington-friendly Democratic Party to ask America for a reconsideration of the 2012 transfer.

In the midst of this political jockeying, life for American GIs in Seoul goes on. A group of us Harvard interns celebrated the 4th of July at Yongsan Army base, the headquarters of the U.S. military in Korea. We had expected a quintessentially American festival, but the one we got was also distinctly Korean. At Yongsan there were plenty of hamburgers and bratwurst, but the main attraction was a Korean pop concert featuring A-listers the Brown Eyed Girls and SG Wannabee. The crowd was a mix of Korean and American army families. The 8th Army Band featured both Korean and American soldiers, and they played both Gershwin’s “Summertime” and Korean folk songs. The festival was a balance between two very proud cultures; hopefully such understanding can be reached on more serious military matters as well.


Anita J. Joseph ’12 is a Crimson editorial writer in Leverett House.