Rep. Dan Burton apparently feels South Korea is getting “forgotten” as an ally, and he wrote his fellow lawmakers to tell ‘em about it:
A senior U.S. congressman on Wednesday called for closer ties between the U.S. and South Korea, its “forgotten ally.” Rep. Dan Burton, the vice chairman of the U.S. House International Relations Committee’s Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific, coined the phrase in a letter to fellow representatives on Wednesday.
Burton???s call offers a rare glimpse of pro-Korean sentiment in a Congress whose prominent voices have recently expressed open distrust and anger at Seoul, with International Relations Committee chairman Henry Hyde and East Asia and Pacific Subcommittee chairman Jim Leach in the forefront.Burton reminded lawmakers that South Korea has been pulling its weight in the alliance 55-years after the Korean War, a point he said was all too often forgotten.
Read the rest of what Burton had to say. What he says, is, for the most part, correct, although I still don’t believe that justifies a large commitment of U.S. ground troops on the Korean Peninsula when South Korea has more than enough bodies (and more than enough money to equip them properly, especially vis-a-vis the North Koreans) to protect their country from an invasion by their friendly neighbor to the North (providing air and naval support is a different matter). It should also be noted that the U.S. isn’t the only place where the importance of the alliance is apparently being lost on a great number of people.
2 Comments
Yeah, like that’ll convince them.
I appreciate what the BBC writes about the SK military:
This is a time of transition for the South Korean military. The government is proposing an increase in spending to promote a more independent defence policy as the United States scales back its military presence in the country.
There is talk of building a more professional and better equipped force that would deter North Korea’s million-man army with technology rather than weight of numbers.
The conscript army, backed by US military power, was once the unquestioned bedrock of national defence.
But questions about the state of morale, the treatment of conscripts and levels of competence have seriously undermined public confidence.
The link is here.