Why the US Should Withdraw
By Edward Kim
It is not easy to say, but the current presence of 37,500 U.S. troops in South Korea is a great impediment to the establishment of North Korean human rights. It is not easy to say because half a century ago the blood of over 50,000 Americans valiantly watered the soil of democracy there which today flourishes. Moreover, the U.S. presence has protected the South from another devastating invasion by the North for decades.
But for the past decade Kim Jong Il’s regime has been falling apart. The government founded on the ideology of “Juche” (self-reliance) can barely feed its military through diverted foreign aid let alone conduct a lone invasion (a capitalist China would not again support an attack on the South). No, Kim Jong Il’s sole concern now is survival through internal repression and external extortion.
To cut off both means of Pyongyang’s life support, the U.S. would merely have to 1) remove its troops from the peninsula; and 2) redirect its humanitarian aid from Pyongyang’s military to North Korean refugees in neighboring countries. Of both factors, unlike an attack on Axis of Evil member Iraq, the U.S. could deliver fatal blows to a maniacal dictator not by military force but by military and economic withdrawal.
Regarding the first point (the second has already been addressed elsewhere), it is no secret that Kim Jong Il himself has expressed the need to keep U.S. troops in South Korea in order to maintain “stability.” That is because Kim Jong Il’s propaganda only works if there is a clear and present danger of “foreign devils” perceived as being on the verge of “starting” another war with the North. Consider this recent representative statement:
“The U.S. is the aggressor and the kingpin of evil as it is keen to start a war, standing in the way of peace and reunification of Korea,” said the commentary, distributed by KCNA just hours after Powell’s coffee with Paek. Washington Post, July 31
Can you imagine how much ammunition Pyongyang’s scare machine will have with a U.S. attack on Iraq? No more U.S. troops on the DMZ would mean no more clear and present danger for North Korea’s citizen soldiers. This would in turn take away the primary justification for the Big Brother control and repression used by the military regime, that is, protecting national security, to maintain its grip on power.
And that is why there is great resistance to a U.S. withdrawal from the peninsula, not primarily from the United States but from South Korea, which implicitly supports the presence of U.S. troops, no longer out of fear of a North Korean military invasion, but out of fear of the economic strain on their living standards that a sudden reunification would bring. Henry Kissinger once commented that South Korean officials were not worried about Pyongyang developing nuclear weapons, quite simply, because they never believed the North would ever use them on the South; and when the Stalinist regime collapsed, Seoul would conveniently be in possession of the bomb.
Deflecting the real reason South Korea continues to host U.S. troops, that is, an unwillingness to bear the economic sacrifices that an immediate reunification would require, many South Koreans instead assert that the U.S. keeps troops in South Korea out of the U.S.’ own imperialistic interests. They insist that the U.S. wants to maintain a strong counter-presence to a rising China in a strategically favorable location.
Perhaps there is some truth to this. But so what? The Philippines successfully ejected the U.S. from their territory. Do South Koreans have less control over their nation’s sovereignty than did the Filipinos? Moreover, what did the U.S. have to do, for example, with the South Korean embassy in Libya going out of their way to hand a North Korean nurse seeking asylum over to their North Korean counterparts?
In the final analysis, the U.S. military in South Korea is no longer there to protect the people against the North Korean military. No, the U.S. military is on the DMZ to protect South Koreans from North Korean refugees who would inevitably come down in droves in the event of reunification. That unfortunately is more to be feared by South Koreans than weapons of mass destruction.
