The Future of U.S. Forces in Korea

Abstract

The end of the Cold War and the North-South summit of June 2000 have provoked growing discussion in Korea and the United States concerning the future of the American military presence in the peninsula. President Kim Dae Jung of South Korea has urged a continued American presence even after unification to help stabilize a regional balance of power.¹ Former President Clinton has pledged to keep U.S. forces in Korea “as long as they are needed and the Korean people want them to remain.”² Challenging this position, an Economic Strategy Institute study group has urged a phased, seven-year disengagement of all U.S. forces,³ and a Cato Institute proposal has called for a U.S. withdrawal within four years.⁴ North Korea, for its part, while committed to an eventual U.S. withdrawal, has indicated its readiness to negotiate an indefinite transitional arrangement during which American forces would shift from their present adversarial role, restricted to the defense of the South, to a new, more symmetrical role as a stabilizer and balancer dedicated to deterrence of an attack by either the South against the North or the North against the South. The North has linked its proposal for a change in the role of American forces to the replacement of the 1953 Korean War Armistice and to an agreement with the United States limiting or ending North Korean missile testing, production, and deployment.