A History of Korea (112 page)

North Korea observed the changing climate in the South Korean perception of its alliance with the United States, and so it framed the United States as a hostile bully and emphasized the need for both Koreas to cooperate with each other against the United States. North Korea also used the nuclear threat to turn the South Korean public against the
ROK
–U.S. alliance, often cleverly portraying U.S. policy in a negative light and attempting to show the United States as acting in a purely unilateral and self-interested manner when dealing with North Korea.

The United States Forces Korea (
USFK
), which has symbolized the
ROK
–U.S. alliance, has two mandates: to protect South Korea from North Korean threats and to protect U.S. strategic interests in the Far East. Koreans with conservative views have tended to emphasize the first mandate, whereas those with progressive views have more likely stressed the second. But U.S. troops have served both functions. There was a time when North Korea was seen as a military power with a strong economy, and American forces were then seen more as protectors of South Korea. With North Korea on the verge of collapse, however, the
USFK
has been increasingly thought to be primarily focused on protecting U.S. interests rather than South Korea’s security.

The U.S. military presence was always predicated on the continuing North Korean military threat to South Korea. If the threat from North Korea was no
longer compelling, neither was the rationale for the
ROK
–U.S. military alliance. The
USFK
has been very successful in fulfilling its original mission of deterring another North Korean aggression, but, ironically, this success has made the U.S. military presence less necessary to South Korea. In particular, South Korea’s engagement policy toward North Korea, pursued by the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, had the unintended consequence of making U.S. troops seem less important for South Korea’s security.

All these factors together contributed to a growing debate in South Korea over the U.S. military presence, which was increasingly seen as a social irritant and a remnant of the almost forgotten Cold War. Given these doubts over the U.S. military presence, in early June 2004 the United States announced that it planned to withdraw 12,500 of the then 37,000 troops stationed in South Korea by the end of 2005. This would force South Korea to shoulder more responsibility for defending itself against North Korean aggression. The United States made it clear, however, that the troop reduction would be matched by more than $11 billion for modernizing U.S. defensive capabilities in South Korea. The cut in U.S. troops would include 3,600 soldiers from the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division already earmarked for redeployment to Iraq in August 2004. In October 2004, under pressure from South Korea, the two allies agreed to withdraw the 12,500 troops more slowly, in phases stretching to September 2008.

The troop reduction plan was geared at lowering the U.S. military’s profile in areas where its presence had provoked resentment and become a troublesome political problem. Reducing the number of troops in South Korea, or at least their visibility, could remove a major irritant. The U.S. military presence was controversial among South Koreans for years, and the deaths of two Korean teenage girls run over by a U.S. military vehicle in June 2002 inflamed violent anti-American sentiment in South Korea.

Since the late 1990s the international and regional context of South Korean– U.S. relations underwent great and possibly fundamental changes at a rate outpacing the ability of officials to deal with them. South Korea’s rapid progress in its own economic and political development over the decades resulted in greater national confidence and a desire for a more equal and mutually respectable relationship with the United States. With the emergence of heightened public criticism of the United States, the relationship with the chief ally became politicized in South Korea to an unprecedented degree. A whole range
of contradictory developments unfolded to the point where South Koreans and Americans began to take a hard look at the future of their relationship.

In early 2003 the United States made an important decision that would alter the U.S. military presence in South Korea—the redeployment of the 2nd Infantry Division of some 14,000 troops from its positions just below the
DMZ
to “hub bases” about 75 miles south and the relocation of the Yongsan garrison, housing some 8,000 U.S. military personnel in the center of Seoul, away from the city. These U.S. personnel and bases were all to be relocated to the P’y
ŏ
ngt’aek site, south of the Han River. The relocation of the 2nd Infantry division, scheduled to be completed by the end of 2008, would facilitate the Pentagon’s plans to restructure the army’s traditional combat divisions into smaller, mobile combat brigades. A 1991 agreement to relocate the Yongsan base had never been implemented. In July 2004 South Korea and the United States agreed to move the Yongsan compound, with South Korea assuming the estimated cost of $5.5 billion to relocate the base, by the end of 2008. In December 2006, however, it was revealed that the relocation of
USFK
bases to P’y
ŏ
ngt’aek could fall three to five years behind schedule. The Yongsan garrison was expected to move to the new site by the end of 2011 and the 2nd Infantry Division at the end of 2013. The delay was caused by the failure to obtain all the necessary land for the transfer of the U.S. bases as a result of anti–U.S. protests by local residents and civic activists.

In March 2005, President Roh Moo-hyun surprised neighboring countries, particularly the United States, when he announced a new foreign policy strategy in which South Korea would fulfill “the role of a balancer in Northeast Asia.” Regarding the military aspect of this strategy, Roh said that South Korea would not be drawn into conflicts in Northeast Asia against its will. He expressed his determination to develop an independent armed force with its own command authority as a foundation for that goal. This set the policy to retrieve wartime operational control from the United States and enhance South Korea’s capability for a self-reliant defense.

Roh’s remarks indicated that South Korea as a “balancer,” deciding the balance of power in Northeast Asia, would be locked into neither the tripartite “southern alliance” of South Korea, the United States, and Japan nor the opposing
“northern alliance” of North Korea, China, and Russia, and that South Korea would take sides on an issue-by-issue basis. The South Korean government argued that the southern alliance, which had been created to counter the northern alliance in the Cold War period, had become an obstacle to peace and security rather than a bulwark, especially as the northern alliance had disintegrated.

Roh’s balancing strategy gave the impression that South Korea would in effect break away from the trilateral security alliance with the United States and Japan and lean toward China, suggesting that the gulf between South Korea and the United States was rapidly widening. The United States, meanwhile, appeared to view South Korea’s desire to become a balancing influence in Northeast Asia as an attempt to shake itself free of the alliance with its blood-forged ally. Ironically North Korea’s Kim Jong-il stated that it was the United States that should provide the balancing power to stabilize Northeast Asia.

Although the
ROK
Constitution stipulates that the nation’s territory covers the entire Korean peninsula, the nation’s sovereignty has never been exercised in the area north of the Military Demarcation Line, which is now under North Korean control. In the event that North Korea collapses as a result of internal turmoil, its entire area will automatically come under the jurisdiction of the
ROK
government and military, and reunification will have been achieved. U.S. military authorities, however, have a different idea. In a North Korean collapse, the United States would be concerned primarily about North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction. The United States, therefore, would act to stop the shipment of plutonium, highly enriched uranium, or nuclear weapons out of the country, possibly to terrorists. It was imperative, therefore, that the U.S. commander-in-chief of the South Korea–U.S. Combined Forces Command should quickly take control of a North Korea in total collapse.

When U.S. officers at the Combined Forces Command began mapping out a scenario to prepare for the breakdown of the North Korean regime, the contingency plan, code-named “
OPLAN
(Operation Plan) 5029–05,” essentially defined how the U.S. commander would assume command of all South Korean and U.S. forces on the entire Korean peninsula to secure North Korean weapons of mass destruction and establish public safety. In April 2005 South Korea’s National Security Council vetoed the joint military plan which laid out military measures corresponding to various levels of internal trouble in North Korea, such as mass defection of refugees or an armed revolt leading to a regime
change. South Korean security officials determined that the contingency plan could infringe upon Korean sovereignty and trigger a full-scale war. The South Korean
NSC
decision was publicly announced without prior consultation with the U.S. side. This unilateral action was seen as yet another sign of strained relations between the two allies.

In the spring of 2005 the issue of “strategic flexibility” for the U.S. forces in South Korea became a ticking bomb in the
ROK
–U.S. alliance. Under the program “Global (Defense) Posture Review (
GPR
),” the United States gave its overseas troops greater strategic flexibility to respond to regional military situations. As envisioned under the GPR, the United States intended to move South Korean–based forces elsewhere in an emergency, but Roh Moo-hyun, in March 2005, resisted the idea of strategic flexibility, saying that South Korea would never become embroiled in conflicts in Northeast Asia against its will. Roh’s position was interpreted as a clear objection to turning the
USFK
into a regional expeditionary force, and the Roh administration even dubbed it the “Roh Moo-hyun doctrine.”

The United States claimed that the idea of strategic flexibility resulted from changes in U.S. global military strategy that would also, in an emergency, allow the U.S. forces elsewhere in the region to be moved to the Korean peninsula to honor its security commitments. In other words, strategic flexibility presumably benefited South Korea as well as the United States. The Roh administration, however, highlighted only its objections to deploying the
USFK
in conflicts in Northeast Asia and did not point out the trade-off that American troops from elsewhere could be shipped to the Korean peninsula if they were needed. The Roh government’s position therefore gave the impression that strategic flexibility meant nothing but sacrifices for South Korea to secure U.S. strategic interests. It was contradictory, however, to expect the dispatch of U.S. troops to the Korean peninsula from other regions in an emergency but oppose deployment of the
USFK
if emergencies happened elsewhere. The Roh administration was criticized for expecting something for nothing.

In January 2006 South Korea and the United States reached an agreement allowing the
USFK
to be deployed to trouble spots elsewhere but requiring consent from the
ROK
government if the United States intervened in a regional conflict. Thus, only with South Korean consent could U.S. forces in South Korea intervene in a flare-up between Taiwan and China or patrol near China
if necessary. South Korea risked a further reduction of U.S. troops in the country if it refused the concept of strategic flexibility altogether.

Many South Koreans, as we have seen throughout the book, resented the U.S. military presence as a reminder of past dependency on the United States. The command structure, in particular, dating from the Korean War and giving the U.S. commanding general operational control over the bulk of South Korea’s military forces, drew most of the public condemnation. Many South Koreans insisted that it was no longer appropriate for the United States to retain full operational control over their forces now that South Korea had evolved into a regional power. In early October 1994 South Korea and the United States agreed to return peacetime operational control of
ROK
forces to South Korea.

On several occasions, Roh Moo-hyun emphasized South Korea’s need for independent operational capability in war or peace. The question of South Korea’s recovering wartime operational control over its military forces from the United States was already put on the agenda of the “Future of the Alliance Initiatives” talks between the two allies in 2003, but no substantial discussions occurred. The shift of operational control involved many practical ramifications that could entail questions even about the necessity of the
U.N.
Command and, most important, the level of U.S. forces in South Korea.

In the summer of 2006, on a Roh administration initiative, South Korea and the United States agreed to work on a roadmap to establish a new joint command structure that would allow South Korea to exercise independent wartime operational control. The target period to complete the process was 2010 to 2012, but in August the United States announced that it planned to hand the control to South Korea at an earlier date, hoping to transfer complete command by 2009. Growing anti-American sentiment in South Korea and the deteriorating
ROK
–U.S. military alliance were behind the decision. South Korea, however, then proposed making the target year for transferring control flexible based on the security situation on the Korean peninsula. Finally, on 23 February 2007, South Korea and the United States agreed to dissolve the current
ROK
–U.S. Combined Forces Command and complete the transfer of control to South Korea on 17 April 2012. President Roh hailed the transfer as “regaining South Korea’s military sovereignty.” The date for the handover carried symbolic meaning, since 4/17, in U.S. parlance, inverted the date 7/14, which was significant because, on 14 July 1950,
ROK
President Syngman Rhee had sent a letter to
General Douglas MacArthur,
UNC
commanding general, stating that he would relinquish command authority to
ROK
forces.