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In a ¡°town hall¡± meeting with U.S. Defense Department staff Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the role of the Korean military would play in the defense of South Korea would increase and U.S. forces in Korea would move into sea and air hubs outside Seoul. Such statements have been growing increasingly concrete. The fresh comments come at a time when differences are emerging between Seoul and Washington over just how flexible the U.S. military presence in Korea should be.
¡ß Korea must take more responsibility
Rumsfeld and USFK commander Gen. Leon LaPorte have used every opportunity to stress an increased role for Korea in its own defense. Their comments have grown more frequent since Korea started emphasizing its ¡°cooperative independent defense¡± line.
In the short term, this appears to mean moving 10 specific missions from the USFK to the ROK Army. Between 2004 and 2006, tasks like guarding the Joint Security Area (JSA), countering North Korean long-range artillery and preventing seaborne intrusions by North Korean special forces, now handled by the USFK, will be taken over by the Korean military. With that it will assume virtually total responsibility for defending the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
Some experts wonder if the U.S. has a long-term aim to completely withdraw its ground forces or transform the USFK into a regional expeditionary force. One defense expert who asked to remain anonymous said Rumsfeld¡¯s comments implied Washington would either withdraw its ground forces completely or transform the USFK into a regional expeditionary force. He said the latter seemed more likely given the way the U.S. Second Infantry Division is re-organizing.
¡ß U.S. to sea and air
When Rumsfeld spoke of the USFK moving to air and sea hubs, he was likely referring in the short term to the redeployment of the Yongsan Garrison and U.S. Second Infantry Division to bases south of the Han River by 2008. ¡°Our forces will be, over time, in a careful way, as we pass off these responsibilities to the South Koreans -- will be moving into two hubs, basically a sea hub and an air hub,¡± he said. In future, the USFK will regroup along two hubs near Pyeongtaek-Osan and Daegu. Of these, Pyeongtaek harbor and Osan Air Base are expected to become U.S. naval and air hubs in the event of an emergency on the Korean Peninsula.
There is concern that military deterrence on the Korean Peninsula could suffer if the USFK were to become solely an air and naval force without ground forces.
¡ß Korea to become less dependent
Rumsfeld said the U.S. was turning over missions to the Korean military but ¡°not behaving in a way that creates a dependency on their part because we're doing all of those things for them.¡± Narrowly viewed, this could be seen as a demand that Korea show the same level of ¡°sincerity¡± while the U.S. pushes plans to pump US$11 billion in strategic reinforcements into USFK. It is in other words a request for Korea to invest in upgrading its own military.
Some wonder, however, if the term ¡°dependency¡± was not limited to simply a military dependency, but rather made with a political aspect in mind, including the entirety of the Korea-U.S. alliance.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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