For years, South Korea has had a love-hate relationship with Washington and as recent poll data indicate, Korean views of the US are muddled and confused. A recent online survey shows that almost 50 percent of college students feel the US is the greatest impedimnt to unification, but 72 percent of these same respondents feel the US is necessary for South Korea's security. (The US maintains about 37,000 soldiers and an equal number of dependents and others linked to the military; some are being redeployed to Iraq and all troops will be moved from the major base in Seoul in a few years.)

Rumors and speculation of a complete withdrawal of US Forces in South Korea (USFK) gained currency throughout the politically supported anti-American and anti-military demonstrations in the fall of 2002, then the election of President Roh Moo-hyun, and Seoul's subsequent implementation of North Korean rapprochement policies that might best be described as "Sunshine Plus". Roh has adopted a careful but distinctly pro-Korean policy and weighs US concerns and requests against the central issue: what's best for South Korea. This causes some disquiet in Washington.

Now, under the aegis of the US Global Defense Posture Review - a pan US forces review and realignment program - a total of 12,000 USFK personnel will be re-deployed away from Korea in the not too distant future, and the rumor mill is deafening.

In mid-May, South Korean media reported that 5,700 US infantry troops originally destined for Korea were reassigned to Iraq last December. This report was followed almost immediately by USFK confirmation that 3,600 USFK infantry soldiers will be leaving their positions along the DMZ for Iraq soon, by mid-summer. Whether they return to Korea or become part of the 12,000 member re-deployment outside South Korea is uncertain.

Shangri-La Dialogue
Redeployment talks are scheduled to take place on the sidelines of the 9th session of the Future of the Alliance Policy Initiative talks, or FOTA, scheduled for June 7, next Monday in Seoul. US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has acknowledged that he will be having similar talks with South Korean Defense Minister Cho Young-kil at an annual Asia-Pacific security meeting, called the Shangri-La Dialogue, scheduled to begin Friday, in Singapore.

Throughout, the United States has made it clear that it will not "abandon" South Korea, and have committed to investing an additional US$11 billion in theater defense platforms in and around Korea over the next three years.

But this will be an investment in technology, not in human resources. The days of US soldiers patrolling "Freedom's Frontier", as the border between North and South Korea is called, are probably over.

In South Korea, news of the redeployment elicits emotions ranging from elation to despair. There is no question that the defense umbrella the US has placed over and around South Korea since the Korean War ended in a cease fire 50 years ago has allowed the nation to redirect to development the resources that would normally have gone to national defense. South and North Korea are still technically in a state of war, but tangible US investments in the nation's defense allowed South Korea to direct resources into the creation of large, state-financed business empires and fund the development of political, social and economic infrastructures necessary for Korea to develop at an unprecedented pace.

The commitment of US troops has provided a "trip-wire" (a term as anachronistic for the USFK as "North Korea as a potential belligerent" has become for South Koreans) defense for Seoul, allowing South Korea to do what is virtually unthinkable for a country in a technical state of conflict to do: grow from a gross national product (GDP) roughly equivalent to that of Equatorial Guinea to become the world's 12th largest economy. All while technically in a state of war, a no-war-no-peace ceasefire.

The US has became a role model for South Korea in spheres that extend well beyond defense. Today, any national accomplishment is invariably compared with a US scale of achievement. America has become simultaneously envied, despised and mimicked. A post-secondary education from the US, for example, has become a pre-requisite for tenure at almost all of Korea's universities. Self-styled anti-American student activists can often be found applying for student visas to the country they love to revile.

Roh seeks more 'equal' relationship with US
President Roh has declared his desire for a more "equal" relationship with the United States - there can be no mistaking the inequality that presently exists. The ability to defend national territory, either independently or through a regional security framework, is a critical component of national self-determination. Allowing another nation to provide both territorial security and the perception of domestic stability makes an "equal" relationship highly unlikely. The role of protector inevitably encourages a patron-client relationship, not an alliance of equals.

Last week, USFK 8th Army commander, Lieutenant-General Charles C Campbell, described his vision of what the USFK-Republic of Korea alliance could become. He spoke of the two nations working together in humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in the region, a relationship that would require the two nations to work closely and in concert to check and react to volatile situations throughout the region.

South Korea's reaction was apoplectic. The Korean Ministry of Defense immediately issued a statement declaring that any such future cooperative role of the two nation's forces would be "burdensome" to South Korea. While South Korea has benefited enormously from the USFK presence here, the South Koreans are not, it seems, about to run around the neighborhood hand in hand with their American "friends". Nor, perhaps, should they.

The USFK has since qualified Campbell's comments as hypothetical, and not part of any new strategy. But Campbell opened the door, perhaps deliberately, for South Korea to look beyond its borders and its most immediate domestic concerns and think, if not globally, at least regionally.

South Korea's strong, visceral reaction to the notion of working with its "ally" in areas beyond the Korean peninsula underscores the divergent beliefs and incompatible visions these two allies hold. The alliance, or at least what's left of it, has few options: it either develops in a less paternalistic and more balanced fashion with a mandate that goes beyond the confines of the peninsula (the Campbell approach); or it weakens, eventually atrophies and becomes a liability particularly for the United States that will find it increasingly difficult to project policy, and when appropriate, force, from the confines of South Korea, the current alliance.

Korea-US joint reaction conflicts with Seoul strategy
The possibility of US-South Korea joint response to regional trouble spots is inconsistent with domestic economic agendas and contemporary threat assessments held by Seoul. Greater regional issues such as the China's rising influence both in the region and in South Korea have little resonance among the South Korean people. Campbell's impromptu expressions of future cooperation may well have been designed to test what most Korean observers have long known to be true: Korea's issue is North Korea, not the region.

All of Korea's relationships, both within the region and beyond, are increasingly weighed and judged based on two often inter-related criteria: domestic economic growth and strategies of peninsular rapprochement. South Korea is developing its own foreign policies based on its vision, perception and agenda. Many Korean observers and ordinary citizens say it's time the United States showed some of the same focused rationality.

When challenged, political agents within South Korea and the US quote the past, often predicating the alliance on historical fact rather than a shared vision of the future. Lieutenant-General Campbell has given his view of the future, a future that is obviously incongruent with South Korea's vision. The defense alliance is based and predicated on the two nations viewing the northern state, Pyongyang, in a like way and thus being able to formulate like policy. South Korea's new perception makes the continuation of joint policy and joint defense unworkable.

Campbell's words were a Hail Mary with zero seconds on the clock. It was unlikely the "offer" of an expanded role for the Republic of Korea-USFK would be taken up by the South Koreans, but the offer, if indirect, was nonetheless made. The United States can now move forward with the regional redeployments as a component of global force restructuring plans in the knowledge that every alliance option has been explored, while South Korea, for its part, should move forward with its Pyongyang rapprochement policies consistent with its view of the peninsula and the region. 

David Scofield, former lecturer at the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, is currently conducting post-graduate research at the School of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, United Kingdom.

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