From the Korea Times:
South Korea and the United States are engaged in a tug-of-war over the size, timing and type of the former’s planned dispatch of troops to Iraq.
Senior security officials from both sides continued negotiations in Washington D.C. on Thursday over the details of the troop dispatch but failed to make tangible progress in their second day of talks.
The Seoul delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Su-hyuck, was said to have maintained a very cautious approach, proposing South Korea would send up to 3,000 non-combatant engineering troops to the Middle Eastern nation.
Seoul is also seeking to postpone the dispatch of the troops until the end of the general elections slated for April next year.
But the U.S. side, headed by Assistant State Secretary James Kelly, was said to have raised strong opposition to Seoul’s stance, prodding Seoul officials to reconsider expanding the deployment.
Seoul is apparently engaging in a little North Korean-style diplomacy:
Experts said the Seoul government has been maintaining a “strategic ambiguity” in dealing with the matter without clarifying its stance.
“Seoul has been seeking to put the issue of sending only some 3,000 non-combatant troops as an ‘open question’ in its negotiation with the U.S. side. But I don’t think it will be the final move by the Seoul government. It will only be the starting point,” Kim Sung-han, professor at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security, said.
Will someone PLEASE remind me why we have 37,000 troops here? Christ, with friends like this, who needs enemies?
9 Comments
It’s clear South Korea has developed a Pyongyang style.
How many USFK agreements have they signed over base consolidations and relocations over the years never to fullfill — while at the same time using base locations as a prime source of anti-USFK agitation?
What about the US Embassy buildings?
And now we have the new “agreement” to move 2 ID south “sometime in the future” —-
Right…maybe in never-never-land.
The articles today on the troop dispatch show the same kind of duplicity. They decided to not send “combatants” but non-combatant engineers, but then they don’t like the idea of putting them under US control in US units? Well, who is going to provide their security if they aren’t going to send “combatants”???
A paragrapha in the Times article was perfect slant. Saying the rotation of US troops in Iraq was a “desperate” attempt by the US to keep things from escalating out of hand in Iraq. When in fact, the rotations are to take heavy war fighting units out for lighter troops and those with more training in civil affairs and policing.
I wonder if South Korea considers these units as “noncombatants”?
Besides engineers, I wonder if they would send military MPs and security forces? Probably not since they don’t want to go to Mosul or an area that needs more muscle than the Iraqi security forces area able to provide right now….
And last, it really is amazing South Korea decided to follow Pyongyang’s style of sending 2 politicial minders with tourist who go to the North,by sending KCIA agents with Hwang to the US and putting a musle on him to the point of getting into a physical confrontation with US congressional staffers of senators who wanted to talk to Hwang without the South Korean thought police…..
lets get one thing clear, there is not a “pyongyang style” or a “seoul style” there is a “korean style”. and despite the fact that the south koreans have been dragged into the modern world -kicking and screaming i might add- they are still more alike their northern cousins than different. ever wonder why unionists, industrialists, student activitists, ajummas on the street, etc, act in extreme, irrational ways that directly undermine their own interests? what about the politicians that extort protection money from the large chaebols [pay us now and we won't audit you]? sounds to me exactly how the norks act when they come south or invite certain southern groups to experience the joys of their company [pay us now and we won't bomb you]. one thing we have to stop assuming is that our hosts here will behave in a substantially different manner from their confucionist-commy cousins. they will not, they are cut from the same cloth. and as for the reason there are 37,000 us troops here…hostages.
Unfortuantely, Angus makes a good point - North Korean and South Korean negotiating styles do not differ as much as you’d imagine. Trade negotiations with South Korea, from what I’ve read, are every bit as ugly as nuclear negotiations with North Korea, and someone familiar with the tactics used in one would immediately recognize those employed in the other.
North or South, they are Koreans, after all.
I don’t think Korea, or anyone else, should be sending troops to help Bush out of his mess. But geesh… they want to send troops in April? If I’m in the White House, I would tell Noh to expect a similar slow-motion reaction should South Korea need America’s help…
Brian
Maybe the ROK’s need a good Rummy talking-to. When he started talking about repositioning oour troops in Korea, they started to (at leat) say the right things.
If he put 1000 U.S. troops on a plane, OUT of Korea, they might get the message.
Yeah, let’s get our people out of the ROK. We have been there for fifty years…has anyone done a death count of Americans who have been killed by border incursions on the DMZ in the last 50 years since the cease fire agreement was reached?
Whether or not we should have 37,000 troops in Korea is its own question. However, why are we in a “tug-o-war” with them over a few thousand South Korean troops when we can just take 3000 of our own damn troops and move them to Iraq? Instead of playing games with all of our allies just to get a tiny number of troops, so the Bush administration can satisfy his liberal critics(NOT) and call the Iraq force “multilateral”, we should just get 50,000 US troops from Korea and elsewhere and send them to Iraq to get the damn job done. Screw this “multilateral” bull**** and just GET THE JOB DONE.
Amen, Dan. I think that goes for Germany, too. World War II is OVER. The Cold War is OVER. The War on Terror is NOW.
US troops are in South Korea because the USA wants them there. The Koreans are not forcing US troops to stay in Korea. If you want US troops out of Korea, then leave, its that simple.
PING:
TITLE: Eyes On Korea: 2003-11-11
BLOG NAME: Winds of Change.NET
NOV 11/03 TOPICS INCL: North Korea, North Korea, and MORE North Korea, fecklessness at the South Korean Ministry of Unification, the debate on sending South Korean troops to Iraq, unionists turn downtown Seoul into a “sea of fire,” moon pies (yes, moon…