By Leon Whyte
“For the alliance to continue into the future, it must expand beyond old parameters.”
The United States Military has been instrumental in shaping perceptions of the United States in Korea, and has played an outsized role in the development of the South Korean state. This relationship dates back to 1945 and the end of World War II, when the U.S. military Government directly ruled South Korea under General John Hodges until 1948. The partnership has been bound in blood since the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. During that war, 36,516 Americans died pushing North Korean troops out of the South and up to the Yalu River border with China.
The U.S. military helped build the foundations for the Republic of Korea and has had a physical presence in the country for almost all of its history. Underscoring the importance of the relationship, it was during the short period after U.S. forces left Korea in 1949 that North Korea invaded the ROK and started the Korean War. North Korea remains a threat to both South Korea and American interests in Pacific Asia. From 1953 to 2003, North Korea was responsible for 1,439 major provocations, as well as for the deaths of at least 90 U.S. and 390 ROK soldiers.
There are currently about 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea; however, the original Cold War logic that inspired Washington’s need to defend against communist encroachment has become more of a historical memory than a driving force. In addition, South Korea is no longer poor and authoritarian, but economically dynamic and legitimately democratic. South Korea’s democratic society is unable to repress latent anti-Americanism in the same way previous authoritarian Korean leaders could. U.S. leaders are losing patience with the idea of supporting rich allies while their own economic situation is still troubled, and resources are under more pressure following the Budget Control act of 2011. In another holdover from the start of the alliance, the United States still maintains wartime operational control of South Korean forces, a situation unique to the U.S.-ROK alliance. Furthermore, there is a large degree of uncertainty about whether the U.S. and the ROK can continue their alliance if Korea is unified, especially if the alliance cannot find new purposes beyond the Korean Peninsula.
Read the full story at The Diplomat