[USFK Forums] 'Korea Needs US Forces After Unification' [Korea Times]

[C. Y. Lee]

Uploaded by C. Y. Lee on Friday, March 17, 2006

‘Korea Needs US Forces After Unification’

The Korea Times, Thursday, March 16, 2006
By Seo Dong-shin, Staff Reporter

Minister of Unification Lee Jong-seok said Thursday that the presence of U.S. forces stationed in South Korea would not be a subject of discussion during possible inter-Korean talks on sealing a peace treaty.

``We must see the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) as a constant,'' Lee said, indicating that the South hopes the USFK would remain in Korea even after the reunification of the two Koreas.

It is one of the two key conditions under which South and North Korea could work toward establishing a peace regime after resolving the North's nuclear issue at the six-party talks, Lee said during a breakfast forum of Seoul National University's political science alumni at a Seoul hotel.

North Korean official media outlets have often criticized the presence of the USFK in the South, describing it as a foreign power that threatens peace and reconciliation of the Korean people.

But North Korean leader Kim Jong-il once said that he has changed his way of thinking since the end of the Cold War, expressing hope that the U.S. military would serve to maintain stability in the Northeast Asian region, according to some South Koreans who met Kim during the inter-Korean summit in June 2000 in Pyongyang.

Lee, the South's point man on North Korea issues, added that the other condition for discussion of the peace treaty entails the matter of bilateral joint control of the inter-Korean border.

``Once the treaty is signed, security issues on the border will be jointly managed by the militaries of the South and North,'' Lee said.

Currently, the United Nations Command (UNC), which the North often condemns as being de-facto U.S. command, is involved in security control around the Military Demarcation Line between the two Koreas.

The government under President Roh Moo-hyun has hoped to replace the current ceasefire status between the two Koreas, which has lasted for more than 50 years, with a peace treaty which it expects would cement peace on the peninsula. The two Koreas remain technically at war since the Korean War (1950-1953) ended with an armistice.

The unification minister said that the inter-Korean industrial complex in the North Korean border town of Kaesong is a key catalyst for co-prosperity of the two Koreas. ``The Kaesong complex blocks the war itself. North Korea withdrew a number of fortresses for building the complex,'' he said.

While the U.S. ban on taking products or technologies of ``strategic importance'' to the North makes it difficult for Kaesong, officials at the U.S. Department of Commerce were fairly cooperative and responded more positively than expected when South Korean government officials consulted with them, Lee said.

Stressing the South's strong wish to make Kaesong a successful symbol of inter-Korean cooperation, Lee said the government wants to establish a broad economic zone encompassing Kaesong in the North and Kyonggi, Inchon in the South, where ``cutting-edge industries make it a central economic bloc in Northeast Asia.''


saltwall@koreatimes.co.kr

03-16-2006 17:42