Maybe..... I think so. I don't think that day is going to happen.
It's too sad. If the Peace continue to be in the world, You don't test your High tech weapon in the war. Isn't it ?
I know well that you won't want it.
Unfortunately, Human like the war. The past day and now.........

Korea is still "a shrimp among whales" and "a dagger pointed at the heart of Japan." I believe the underlying reason for maintaining US forces in Korea is to support a balance of power in the Far East which favors all parties except Korea. Korea's history has been one of victimization by adjacent powers. The US is guilty of betraying Korea on more than one occasion. First, the US ceded Korea to Japan as a result of the Taft-Katsura Memorandum in 1905. Secondly, President Wilson turned his back on Korea after proclaiming self-determination for Korea in his "Fourteen Points," speech, effectively permitting the Japanese military to crush the Korean Independence Movement. Thirdly, the US was singularly responsible for the division of Korea when Col. Dean Rusk (later Sec of State) arbitrarily and capriciously divided the peninsula at the 38th Parallel in August 1945 to permit the Soviet Red Army to occupy the northern half. Ostensibly, US troops have been present in South Korea since 1950 to prevent invasion by the communist north. However, one might truthfully conclude that US presence in the south is in reality an occupation whose intent is to prolong the division of the two halves in order to use Korea as a buffer separating the great powers of Russia, China and Japan. The geopolitical, military, and economic implications of a united Korea strike fear into the hearts of the Japanese leaders, and could ignite hostilities between China and Russia. I think it's a foregone inevitability that the US will lose much of its influence in Asia in the coming years. I hope for the Korea people that the "two Koreas" become one nation with the strength and resolve to determine their own destiny.

I will come back and read the comments tomorow, but I wanted to give an answer today. My answer is --- No.

I really do my best to cut out any influence on my decision from what we gave in the Korean War, and since, and Korean society's habit of fomenting internal anti-US/USFK attitudes.

The important factors to me are parctical considerations -- espeically cost vs risks vs rewards.

I'll list some out in bullet fashion without any consideration for rank in importance, because it shifts for me depending on exactly what we are talking about...

*There is no place on earth where the US is poised to face such a mammoth loss of life and other costs.

Since the end of the Cold War, which coincided with the collapse of North Korea --- placing it perpeturally near a state of total collapse --- keeping a "tripwire" in South Korea is the most serious threat to the loss of life to the American military than anywhere else.

For a very brief time, when we went into Iraq with so many soldiers and thought the Iraqi military had WMDs deployed with them, there was perhaps as much American blood and resources at stake somewhere outside of Korea as we continually, constantly face in Korea, but that period quickly passed.

If North Korea begins to fall apart, it is somewhat likely the demented, despotic Kim Jong Il regime will go out in a blaze of glory, taking a lot of our GIs with it.

*South Korea can defend itself.

Without Soviet and Chinese help, NK can't hope to take on South Korea even by itself, and the Soviet Union is dead and China isn't going to back a North Korean war effort.

SK has a much larger population. SK's pop. is much more healthy than the Norths. SK's economy is exponentially bigger than NK's. SK's economy is industrial in nature ----- they have recently been exporting mobile artillery pieces to Turkey and are in the works to possibly export a frontline tank to Turkey (and other nations).

SK is the 12th largest economic power in the world. NK lives on handouts.

The only things preventing SK from fielding a military that can offer a deterent - because it would be sure to win a war with minimal outside help - are South Korean tax payers.

*The US could use USFK elsewhere. (Afghanistan, Iraq, reserves for future trouble).

*Aren't we still in the process of shutting down bases in the US? Can we really justify putting a mammoth economic hurt on American towns to keep us as a tripwire in Korea?

*Pulling out of South Korea does not mean we will automatically have to leave Japan ---- (This has long been one of the think-tank arguments against pulling out of Korea).

*It is very debatable whether Pyongyang will end up considering a US pullout a greenlight to invade the South. NK knows it is not strong enough to win a war with SK, because it knows it can't count on support from anybody else, and it knows the US, Japan, China, Russia, in a word, everybody, will not allow it to take over the South even if it tried.

Maybe I could come up with a few more points ---- but overall --- I can not see a set of reasons for staying in South Korea that comes REMOTELY CLOSE to justifying the RISK and COST we "endure" by staying there.

Neither side of South Korea's political spectrum (nor those who support them both in the masses) will ever allow the US to use USFK in a "regional" role.

The conservatives balk at the idea, because they want USFK pressed up against NK at the DMZ making sure the US is locked into protecting the South and protecting the South alone. The only reason they have agreed with USFK moves off the DMZ and other changes is --- they couldn't stop it. They have continually called for renegociations of these things.

The liberals are just as deadset against a regional role for USFK for very different reasons.

And the conservatives also know there is too much public support against "imperial" America, and fear of upseting the blossoming future of China-ROK relations, to allow it to agree with a regional role, even if it wanted to, which it doesn't.

The only support South Korea will give to this idea of a regional role combating any of these problems will be lip-service in nature.

And if they get pressed on allowing Korean territory and territorial waters for such a role to actually do something, it will look like China refusing for the most part to make moves on NK or Turkey refusing to allow the US to use it's territory and air space in Iraq War II.

On 50 years in Iraq:

I hope it doesn't take that long, but if a nation as stable and as democratic as South Korea is today can be established in Iraq - in that region - I think it is worth the sacrifice.

I don't decry the sacrifices we have made in South Korea. I do think we should have started getting out around 1995...

Also ---- on leaving the Air Force and/or other small units in Korea: No tripwire-lite. Don't leave soldiers in that will guarantee we have to dump in many more if Korean War II starts. We can provide air support from outside the peninsula if we have to.

On Mitchell's comment:

Google around for yourself if you are curious about the different points he brings up. You will find some very different opinions.

*Taft-Katsura Memorandum "causing" the colonization by Japan is poo. It is commonly accepted as truth in Korea, but it doesn't hold up at all. When Taft met Katsura in 1905, Japan had just finished shocking the world by defeating the Russian Empire in a war for control of Korea and parts of Manchuria --- but somehow the US "let" Japan colonize Korea, as if we had anything to say about it...

*President Wilson - as with T-K M - the only way this holds water is if you argue the United States had an obligation to kick the Japanese out and defend Korea - and that was not what Wilson had in mind. He was NOT giving Korea and every colonized nation on earth a military/political alliance with the US.

"permitting the Japanese military to crush the Korean Independence Movement" Good gravey!! That is the first time I've heard that specific charge.......but again, the idea is that the US not just "should have" stopped it but was in a position to stop it.

Col. Dean Rusk - That is almost historically accurate.

Until we get -- "permit the Soviet Red Army to occupy the northern half"
which is like most of these other charges --- having as an implicit idea that the US should have or was obligated to "not permit" that from happening.

Just google around for information on what the Soviet Union, and before that, Russia's interests in Manchuria and parts of northern Korea were long before Dean Rusk was perhaps even born...

All this stuff is straight out of Bruce Cumings' work (and Hanchongryon - the most ardent, pro-North Korea, anti-US fringe element on campus at South Korean universities), and Cumings is now one of the most debunked historians in post-Cold War academia...

"that US presence in the south is in reality an occupation" ----- a quick poll of South Korean adults on whether they want US troops to leave will quickly give us an answer to the "occupation" claim....

"The geopolitical, military, and economic implications of a united Korea strike fear into the hearts of the Japanese leaders"

as with someone else's comment before about unified Korea becoming a bigger economy than Japan's ----

The people who MOST fear the political and economic implications of a unified Korea are ---- SOUTH KOREANS!!!

This has been very clear since 1997-98 when the brief economic collapse of the Asian Tiger Economies took place. Overnight, unification went from something hoped for to something South Korean society hoped to delay.

Many of the older Koreans in their 50's and older, I believe have a deep desire and hope to see a united Korea. The problem is that the North would love that too but they want it with them in control. Could a united Korea be a real danger economically to Japan? I think that depends on how it is run currently only the SK government could make it work but even then it would require a lot of compromise and that is not a word that seems to go well with government officials. The only way I see Korea being united and successful is when the north crumbles economically and the only ones who care enough to take on the situtation is South Korea. I personnelly do not feel we are needed in the south as a deterent and probably we will eventually see all forces in Korea with drawn. In my lifetime, probably not but nothing is impossible.

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Just my humble opinion!

Guess I still like my post from January 26th. But I will have to lean toward USINKOREA. We don't need to be here in force anymore. We have trained the Koreans past defending themselves, and now are allowing them to drift toward dependency. We will do that in Iraq if we continue to fight their battles for them. Lets give both countries the opportunity to stand alone!

We don't need to abandon them, just move to Japan, Guam and Kuwait and Italy with airpower at the ready. Soldiers won't be required until cleanup time.

I agree with the 50 and older. I would raise it up to 65 and older, because that was the impression I got when teaching adults in the late 1990s, and it has been about 10 years since then.

Interestingly enough, it is these same older generations who show a geninue positive feeling for the US-SK relationship. (Of course, there are some older people who are anti-US just as there are some younger ones who are pro-US), but in general, it was the older generations ---- those who have some memory of the Korean War or back to the Japanese colonization as well -- who are non-cynical supporters of the alliance.

One interesting thing about that --- these are the same generations who had the most familiarity with the authoritarian rulers/dictators of South Korea -- the same authoritarian rulers the younger 386 generation and later blame the US for and use as one of the foundation stones for anti-US culture in SK....

On the economic potential --- a unified Korea is going to have one hell of a time dealing with how utterly poor North Korea is as well as the 50 years of brainwashing in a communist, odd-ball system.

South Koreans don't want to unify today, because they saw the impact of the unification in Germany, and they know that SK's economy is not as strong as West Germany's and NK's is MUCH WORSE than East Germany's was a the time.

The only way unification with the North will lead to sucessful competition in overtaking Japan would be if the US, EU, Japan --- the leading economic powers in the world --- moved to bail Korea out with something like a Marshal Plan. That will happen in part, I believe, but not a total effort like the Marshal Plan was for Europe, and I would give it a 75% chance that unification with a bankrupt NK will set the Korean economy back 100 years (seriously) before it got solidly on its feet and recovered a standard of living (North and South) that South Korea currently enjoys.

(This prediction on time is a wild guess. Economic is one of my weakest areas, but the big picture of uniting with a dirt poor, backward North Korea is something anybody can see)

Some amazing points in here.. I've learned more about the history and future of Korea in this thread than I have in all the movies/lectures I've been through upon arriving here 6 months ago. :)

Also, usinkorea I pretty much agree with everything you've said. You've clearly covered your bases.

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You buy me juice?

You can check out my blog where on the sidebar I've included in the blogroll link section links to Korea related academic journals that have free articles online.

You can google around for a good bit of more information on all the major US-Korea related topics - most of them "hot button" issues - so just keep that in mind when you read something (even of mine).

If you want to see the standard Korean version of those below 65 years of age - you can try http://www.kimsoft.com/korea.htm

It is listed and described on some Korean Studies websites as: An independent, non-partisan, non-profit, and educational web on all things Korean

At some point, I believe I will find on that site information on how I play centerfield for the New York Yankees....

But, look around it, and you will get a feel for what the hot topics are, and you can google from there...