The Marmot’s Hole

Great piece in the LA Times discussing force upgrades in South Korea. That USFK is undergoing major changes should come as no big surprise to those who follow events on the Peninsula, but the LAT article focuses mainly on the new, high-tech weapons systems being introduced into South Korea even as American forces pull back from the DMZ. Just some samples:

“More lethality with fewer people,” is the way one security analyst described the new mantra of the Pentagon when it comes to the Korean peninsula.

For five decades, troops with the U.S. Army’s 2nd Infantry Division have been dug in near the DMZ as the first line of defense against a possible North Korean invasion. As with other U.S. troops, the Pentagon would like to see them become faster, lighter and better able to respond to unpredictable global crises.

“We still have a lot of forces in Korea arranged very far forward … where they really aren’t very flexible or usable for other things,” Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said this year.

One system emblematic of the high-tech transformation is the new Stryker, a medium-weight armored vehicle that is supposed to be light enough to airlift. The Stryker has eight wheels instead of treads and can reach 60 mph. What it loses in armor it is said to make up for in maneuverability, which is especially important in the Koreas’ mountainous terrain.

Personally, I’m not sold on the Stryker being right for contingencies on the Korean Peninsula, but I’ll defer on this to the military professionals.

Also interesting is some of its discussion of the political uncertainties that may arise as a result of a lighter, more mobile USFK:

“We wonder what is the reason for bringing in these new weapon systems and technology. Is it to protect the Korean peninsula or to extend the regional role of the U.S. military? That is something that has not been completely answered,” said retired Col. Pak Sun Sop, a security expert at the Korean Institute for Defense Analyses in Seoul.

South Koreans are particularly fearful that troops based on their soil could be drawn into a conflict between Taiwan and China, which last year replaced the United States as the South’s largest trading partner. And South Koreans, with memories still fresh of the Japanese colonization of the peninsula in the first half of the last century, remain concerned about a potential threat from Japan.

“The Pentagon keeps talking about a force that is deployable off of the Korean peninsula to protect our interests in the region. But protect against whom? There is a lot that goes unspoken,” said an American security analyst who asked that he not be named. “The Koreans think that the possibility of a North Korean invasion is less and less believable, and they tend to look toward Japan. We look in the other direction.”

This was an issue that was well discussed in an OhMyNews piece from November (which I translated here).