USFK out of Korea! (Eng/Kor)

Posted: 2002/09/04  By: Brian O'Brien (Views:3364)

All this talk about the deaths of those two girls has got me thinking.  Why is the US in Korea?
 Does the United States get an economic or strategic military advantage by stationing troops
here?

Korea runs a huge trade surplus with the United States.  Hyundai alone makes more money
selling cars to Americans than Americans make from selling weapons to Korea.  I do not see
American cars on the streets of Seoul but I see Korean cars everywhere in the States.  The
Korean market is essentially closed to American products except for the Big Mac and the Pentium
chip -- meanwhile Korean companies make enormous profits selling to the American market.  Also,
stationing American troops here is costly.  The American taxpayer spends billions to keep the
troops in Korea which allows Korean taxpayers to spend less on military defense.  So stationing
American troops in Korea is a money-losing proposition for Americans while being economically
beneficial for Koreans.

Is there some kind of strategic advantage for keeping American troops here?  If America
fights a war with China is Korea going to be used as a platform to bomb China or to stage a
ground invasion of the Chinese mainland?  Somehow I doubt it.  The US would have a hard time
defending Korea against Chinese missile attacks or against a Chinese ground invasion.  Korea
would be extremely costly to defend against the Chinese and it is doubtful that the Korean
people would allow their country to be annihilated by allowing their nation to be used against
their much larger neighbor and second largest trading partner.  

The Americans came to Korea after the defeat of Imperial Japan.  After liberating Korea, the
Americans found Korea to be strategically unimportant and pulled the troops out.  Shortly
thereafter, the North Koreans invaded the South.  The Americans returned to Korea to drive back
what they saw as communist aggression.  At that time communist expansion was feared to be a
direct threat to the United States.  After the cessation of hostilities on the peninsula the
Americans remained to serve as a deterrent against another attack from North Korea.

In the meantime, South Korea has become a stable capitalist democracy while North Korea has
remained a poor and backward authoritarian country that cannot even feed its own citizens.
 Today North Korea is a global pariah state with a buffoonish leader who has allowed millions
of his own citizens to starve to death as he lives a life of opulence.  South Korea has a
population double the size of North Korea and a GDP thirty-four times larger.  The South
Koreans are perfectly capable of defending themselves without the help of the American
military.  

The Philippines and the Panamanians voted the American military out of their countries.  But
that is not going to happen in Korea.  Korea has a parasitic relationship with the States where
Americans are used as scapegoats and also as a host to bleed cash from.  Maybe if Americans
discovered this fact, that there are no benefits to our nation in staying in Korea, we would
demand a pullout instead of letting this policy inertia to continue long after the benefits to
our nation have passed.