There are a good number of us who have been in Korea (or were there) for years and have picked up information as we’ve gone along, and on this blog’s comment section and our own blogs, have taken on what some consider the distortions that are regular in the Korean media and public.

Most do their best to provide links, usually to newspaper articles, but more indept sources we run across, but we don’t have the kind of knowledge that someone working on the issues directly would.

Such information you provide is gold.

Much of it is specfic and some will, I’m sure, do some tracking from it to verify and get links, and the information will be used in the future when these recurrent issues surface.

I hope you stick around the site and some of the other blogs that post pretty much daily that have similar topics covered.

It could actually make some difference.

I think a good bit of what you wrote about contains things that I’ve read USFK explain in press releases it gives the Korean media and even the civic groups and local community groups when things like the Wonju contamination cases, but you have to dig for stuff like that because it is here today, gone tomorrow.

By commenting on the blogs with this kind of information, it will tend to stay fresh, even if you don’t post a lot, because others will pick it up and remember it for the next time.

(I make the http://www.usinkorea.org site, and it is a safe bet bits and pieces of what you wrote above and in the environmental contamination thread will be used in future work.

and if you read my work there, and you find any major discrepancies from what you know, please let me know — usinkorea@hotmail.com. As I said above, I got most of this from the news media, which doesn’t have the space to get into so much detail.)

Hi again. I??l try to answer as best I can based on my own observations, but I can?? guarantee either the complete accuracy or the relevancy of my notes since I am no longer in a position to see these things for myself as they unravel and haven?? had first hand experience of the negotiations involved in several years now. I can tell you what I knew while I was there though.

The most important thing to get out on the table up front I think is that I believe the ROK side is probably willing to pay 100% of the costs to get the troops out of Yongsan Garrison and down to the Pyongtaek area. I think they?? do this even if the legitimate costs [??egitimate??as defined by ROK MND] ran way over projected estimates, and they?? do it willingly.

But there?? a catch. A big catch.

The sticking point here is not with relocating troops. It never has been. The ROK government wants the land back for many different reasons, most of which are symbolic and have to do with getting foreign troops out of the nation?? capitol, but there are also very practical reasons such as traffic and property tax revenue issues. I think these reasons are undeniably valid.

However, here?? where things have bogged down. The ROK government has no experience with or patience for an all volunteer military and openly expresses dislike for the idea of a ??ittle America??community in its midst, whether it?? in Seoul or Pyongtaek. While the ROK Government is perfectly willing to move the military headquarters and other military operations out of Yongsan, they have never been willing to pay to move, and rebuild again brand new, things they perceive as non-military, and therefore non-essential. For instance, recreational facilities, bowling alleys, movie theaters, the P/X, and most importantly, DODDS schools and family housing. ??ow do DODDS schools and day-care centers help preserve peace and economic prosperity on the Korean peninsula???r

The ROK side has always seen Yongsan as strictly a military headquarters and consequently held to the line that at relocation, they should only have to pay to relocate the soldiers and their military gear, but that families and recreational facilities are here at the convenience of the Americans and therefore Uncle Sam should foot the bill to rebuild these people and facilities down south.

Looking at it from this perspective, it?? not an entirely unreasonable demand.

From a US point of view however, it is totally unacceptable, not even negotiable. For one thing, the ROK govt. has always taken issue at the US side calling Korea a ??ardship tour??and Uncle Sam?? willingness to give out extra pay incentives to soldiers to come here. It?? insulting to Korea and Koreans, they say. Yet, at the same time, the only way for USFK to get around some of the ??orea stigma??[i.e. being 8,000 miles from home and loved ones, while not drawing hazardous duty pay or getting tax breaks] is to have as many ??ommand-sponsored??slots as possible, and provide quality of life incentives and US-style conveniences for the troops AND their families, and of course for the 7,000 civilian employees and THEIR families.

Yes, the ROK side has also balked at taking responsibility for moving the 7,000 or so US and Korean civilian employees working at Yongsan, nearly all of whom have been in Korea far longer than any of the soldiers and who provide USFK with nearly all its professional competence in many non-combat related specialties. Again, the ROK side?? reasons are that these are non-military and non-essential personnel who are only present in Korea to provide convenience for USFK.

The ROK wants the new Pyongtaek HQ to look like a typical ROK army post, very Spartan, no family members, no swimming pools, or state of the art fitness centers, or driving ranges or clubs, or restaurants, or movie theaters, and where ALL of the civilian employees are local Koreans. Basically, they have a vision in their minds of row after row of nice new freshly painted Quonset huts with a couple of nice hooches for the general officers.

This is where the two sides butt heads. For USFK?? part, they stand by the position that these ??onveniences??the ROKs complain of are all necessary to providing a fully functional and stable military headquarters community with high troop morale while being stationed far from home. They say that this is a reasonable request given that Korea is not Iraq and therefore this is a permanent base, not a forward deployed base, and that if US troops have longer tours in Korea they will be able to do their jobs better than if they are only here for a year at a time. Accompanied tours equate to happier troops, and longer tours in the same job giving more time for skill development and expertise and bringing stability to the mission, and of course fewer costly PCS moves. And so USFK said that if the ROK side was unwilling to pay to rebuild these facilities down south, then USFK would be happy to just simply remain in Seoul.

Remember, this is not an unreasonable request either. The SOFA allows the ROK government to demand return of a facility at any time for any reason, but at the same time imposes on the ROK a responsibility to provide USFK with similar facilities elsewhere if they do this. USFK is simply saying ??f you aren?? willing to give us similar facilities to what we already have right now, all of which we paid for with US taxpayer dollars to enhance troop morale and thereby improve the quality of service we provide to the ROK and which we therefore consider important to operational success, then don?? ask us to leave Yongsan anytime soon, because we have nowhere else to go but Hawaii or Japan, and you really don?? want that.?? USFK also points out that when relocating to Pyongtaek, they will be leaving behind hundreds of millions of dollars in assets that the ROK side inherits for free. Think of the $70 million dollar upgrades to the 121st General Hospital and the new $20 million dollar Yongsan helipad, for example. Fair is fair, they say.

So, now we come to what we see in the papers and on TV now, a whole lot of posturing year after year as the ROK side periodically lets slip to the press comments that ??t?? just getting too expensive,??and they do nothing at all to stop the violent protests in the Camp Humphries area, but there is almost no movement yet to actually build this new base. Sure, they??e bought out many of the landowners down there, but it?? going to take a lot longer than 24 months to build what is essentially an entire city. How long does it take to build a helipad, or a new modern hospital, or modern barracks for 8,000 troops, or a fully wired 4-star headquarters building complete with all the sewer, gas, electrical, and fiber optic infrastructure that has to go into the ground before any buildings can go up. And that doesn?? include housing for families and schools assuming those actually get built. This is going to take a long time.

This is a long-term project that has not even gotten off the ground, but you can be sure, when the 2008 deadline looms, the ROK side will be back at the table asking USFK to finally relent in its ??tubborn??demands for schools and family housing.

And that, my friends, is when the real ??uture of the Alliance??negotiations will begin.

Everything going on right now about whether a retaining wall/dike is enough to prevent flooding at the new site or whether the entire flood plain needs to be elevated, is just meaningless posturing and diverts from the real issue: that the ROK wants USFK to consist of only lean, mean war-fighters who leave the families back home, while USFK wants to retain the quality of life improvements they spent so much to build up, but which they claim are actually very effective long-term cost reducers and force multipliers.

Finally, one more problematic issue has been that at one time there was talk about USFK putting all civilian employees in on-base housing at the new location. This sent the Korean side into the stratosphere. The only way they were able to sell to the Korean public this idea of paying for the relocation of Yongsan Garrison was to remind them how much money they?? eventually make renting apartments to the Americans in Pyongtaek. If USFK decided to put these people in on-base housing, more than $150 million per year in ??ommunity benefits??has just been taken off the table. I??e been out of the loop so long I don?? know what became of that proposal, but do know that USFK was serious about stopping the flow of blood [i.e. US taxpayer dollars] going so freely to the dirty pockets of local landlords. As many of you already know, the off-base housing situation at Yongsan is a complete fiscal disaster??ith local landlords being able to call out practically any price they want because USFK simply has no other way to house the employees and employees not being willing to relocate to Korea unless they can have their families with them. But on-base housing will work. This is what has happened in Japan for many years, so it wasn?? something new; it was a way for Uncle Sam to reduce expenses, but the ROK side found it untenable.

That?? really all I know about this thing so I won?? try to go further. I hope it was helpful though.

Hello, bluejives. I apologize for not being more upfront, but as you suspected, it is kind of a sensitive issue, and I don’t want to put my current job at stake by giving out too much detail about my past job; both of which are for the US military.

I have this info from my time working at USFK during which I sat across the table from the Korean MOFAT reps during several of the negotiation sessions, not specifically negotiating the SMA, other more senior team members did that, but I was part of the team that dealt with the many peripheral headache issues that were directly affected [created] by the SMA.

For what it’s worth, I won’t come out and say the SMA is “unfair” to either side per se. Given that both sides put their signatures on the final memorandum, it is, by definition, a “fair and equitable” agreement. My points are not that it was not fair, but that there is a lot of inaccurate info given to the media usually by the same ROK Government reps that negotiated it, and this often makes the agreement look a lot different [i.e. better for the US and worse for the Korean people] than it really is.

In reality, the Japanese and German citizens are footing a far larger percentage of the bills to have US troops stationed on their own soil than the Koreans are, and in Germany at least, they pay the US for improvements made to the land such as airfields, hospitals, and the like, but their governments don’t have a history of trying to score points with the public by inflating the burden-sharing figures to make it look like the US is taking advantage of them. This is a uniquely Korean phenomenon that USFK needs to dig deeper into to find out why it is happening and how best to deal with it.

…since it is a topic near and dear to my heart, having personally dealt with this mess for quite some time.

It sounds like you have dealt with the topic in some kind of a professional capacity. If it’s not too sensitive, do you mind telling us what your job function was and who you worked for?

Charles Kim, a commenter at From the Nakdong to the Yalu, has penned a wonderfully clear and concise summary account of the way in which ROKGOV shamelessly misrepresents its contributions to the costs of the US military protection extended to South Kor…