Looks like Korea and the U.S. will begin discussing USFK reductions next week:
South Korea and the United States will begin official discussions next week on the U.S. plan to downsize its forces stationed here, officials said on Monday.
The talks will take place on the sidelines of the 9th Future of the Alliance Policy Initiative talks, or FOTA, slated for June 7-8 in Seoul, according to South Korea’s foreign affairs and defense ministries.
The U.S. is looking to pull out about 12,000 of its 37,000 troops stationed on the peninsula:
South Korea and the U.S., traditional allies since the 1950-53 Korean War, have agreed to complete the first stage of troop realignment, in which the U.S. Yongsan Garrison and the 2nd Infantry Division will be moved south of Seoul by 2007.
In the upcoming talks, the two sides will discuss the size and timing of the USFK reduction based on the GPR program. The U.S. reportedly proposed last year to pull about 12,000 soldiers, or one-third of the 37,000 troops, out of Korea.
According to officials, the U.S. is expected to propose a similar scale of cuts in the number of troops at next week’s talks, as suggested last year. “The number of 12,000 doesn’t seem negotiable as it was given based on the GPR program,” one official said.
Out of urgency in Iraq and also as part of the GPR, the U.S. informed Seoul in mid-May of its decision to shift some 3,600 USFK soldiers to Iraq. The relocation, which will likely be made by Aug. 15, is widely believed to be part of a permanent troop cutback here.
Some are under the impression that Seoul will try to buy time:
Lee Sang-hyun, director of security studies at the Sejong Institute, said it is naive to imagine that the government can persuade the U.S. to maintain troops here permanently. “Even if we try to convince them to change their plans, they will follow their own schedule,” he said.
But given the growing uncertainty over the fragility of the Korea-U.S. alliance, Lee said reassuring the public will be one of the major objectives of the talks.
“What is now most needed is some sort of assurance, not just military, but psychological,” he said. “If the next meeting can help achieve that then I think it will be considered a success.”
I agree that the key to this all is assuring people that they sky really isn’t falling. One has to wonder, however, how much the U.S. is willing to slow things down to help out a nation that some U.S. officials apparently think isn’t a “real ally”:
Grand National Party lawmaker Park Jin, who visited the U.S. as a GNP special envoy, said on Sunday about plans to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Korea that,” Some U.S. officials said they do not think of Korea as a true ally worthy of trust,” and said that one U.S. official told him that while it conveyed even to China detailed intelligence concerning nuclear technology transfers from Pakistan to North Korea, it did not pass on that intelligence to South Korea.
Park might be talking out his prominent posterior, but we’ve been hearing similar things coming out of a number places, so perhaps he’s not.
Anyway, mark June 7 on your calendars.
