May Call for Troop Reductions : S. Korea Moving to Shed Its U.S. Security Blanket

U.S. relations with South Korea have come to the end of an era, and no one has taken much notice.

The change has not been abrupt, but the signs are clear:

-- The U.S. military, which once was welcomed with open arms, has been asked to move its headquarters out of Seoul, the capital.

-- Opposition leaders are beginning to complain about U.S. nuclear weapons deployed here.

-- President Roh Tae Woo is talking about reducing the number of U.S. troops--or even seeking a total withdrawal--if he can succeed in easing tensions between South Korea and Communist North Korea.

In the 1970s, after President Richard M. Nixon withdrew one division of U.S. troops and President Jimmy Carter proposed to withdraw more troops, South Korea was so unnerved that it fought to make the American presence as noticeable as possible.

Now, however, giving U.S. troops a low profile has suddenly become a political necessity. Troop reductions “are on the negotiating table,” a Western diplomat acknowledged. And President Roh acknowledged this in a recent interview.

Roh said his government has also undertaken a joint study with the United States aimed at removing South Korean armed forces from U.S. operational control, has opened negotiations on revising the status-of-forces agreement and giving South Korean courts greater jurisdiction over U.S. service people involved in criminal acts, and has asked that the U.S. armed forces television network be taken off a channel that can be received in Korean homes.

South Korea’s advance into the upper ranks of industrializing countries and the transformation of Seoul into a metropolis of 10 million people have made the changes inevitable, but not easy.

Gaston J. Sigur, the assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said in July that South Korea is not moving away from security ties with the United States but is questioning how close those ties should be.

Want ‘More of a Say’

“They want to have more of a say in defining it,” he said of the relationship. “That’s fine. It may cause us a bit of heartburn here and there, but it’s a good, healthy attitude.”

Koreans are still friendly toward individual Americans, even while criticizing U.S. policy. But the pro-Americanism of the past has faded.

The artificial props that supported it, such as anti-Communist indoctrination, disappeared this year with the end of authoritarian rule. Roh’s efforts to open contacts with Communist countries in order to ease tensions with North Korea has suddenly cast Communists in a new role--as friends. The censorship that had kept criticism of the United States out of the news media is gone.

The results appeared suddenly during the Olympics in September when there was an unprecedented outpouring of condemnation of perceived American insults to Korean pride.

Anger Over U.S. Demand

Further complicating the military relationship is a new U.S. demand that South Korea take on a greater share of the cost of keeping 42,000 U.S. service people here. Many South Koreans, already bristling over what are widely regarded as highhanded American trade demands, have reacted to the demand with hostility.

Until Roh became president, South Koreans had feared that Washington would make some overture to North Korea and leave South Korea out in the cold. But Roh has moved ahead of Washington. He has lifted a ban on trade with North Korea, while Washington has only eased its embargo. He is no longer treating North Korea as a sponsor of “state terrorism,” although Washington continues to do so.

Roh has said that North Korea and South Korea might be reunified before the turn of the century. The Western diplomat described that as “such a remote contingency it’s hardly worth considering.”

Others agreed with him.

“Impossible!” said Prof. Rhee Sang Woo of Sogang University, a frequent consultant to the Defense Ministry.

Conflicting Social Systems

“Hogwash!” exclaimed a longtime resident analyst, who said there will be no reunification because of conflicting social systems.

But the analyst said that because of widespread emotional support for unification, based on the homogeneity of the Korean people and their 5,000-year-old culture, South Korean leaders “can’t say that” in public. Nor, he said, can Americans.

He predicted that the political necessity to pretend that reunification is possible will cause trouble in the future.

Prof. Han Sung Joo of Korea University warned that contacts with North Korea’s supporters in the Communist world might produce complacency and overconfidence. Such contacts, he said, give “the public and a certain part of the government a false sense of security.”

Freedom of Expression Abounds

“We might come to feel that the (Communist) threat has subsided, or become overly confident that we can handle the threat by ourselves,” Han said. “In the iconoclastic atmosphere of democratized Korea, where freedom of expression now flourishes to a fault, American shortcomings and Russian virtues are being exaggerated with a vengeance.”

Han said he fears that some Americans may get the mistaken impression that South Korea is moving away from the United States and that this could undermine the defense relationship.

The Western diplomat added that changing the command structure and moving U.S. military headquarters out of Seoul could also undermine this relationship.

“When you start meddling with established relationships,” he said, “you unleash forces in the United States that you can’t control.”

Command Differences

A military expert here said that in the event of war, “when the call is made to the White House asking for help, they have to answer that call if an American commander is making it. If it’s a Korean, they don’t even have to pick up the phone.”

In addition, turning control of Korean troops over to a Korean would probably require negotiations to replace the 1953 armistice, which the United States, on behalf of the United Nations, signed with North Korea and China to end the three-year Korean War. South Korea chose not to sign it.

The diplomat acknowledged that changes in the security relationship are inevitable. He said the United States is trying to “alter the symbols without altering the deterrence--because the deterrence is as needed as ever.”

Prof. Han agreed, saying that it “remains a fact that the only key element in maintaining peace is the U.S. security commitment.” North Korea, he said, has the military capacity to start a war, and the Soviet Union would probably be forced to support it to ensure North Korea’s survival.

‘Strategic Guarantee’

According to the resident analyst, South Korea could achieve the firepower that the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division has in South Korea, “but you couldn’t replace the strategic guarantee” that those troops represent.

“Nothing replaces a superpower except another superpower,” he said.

American sources here agree that a troop reduction would be possible if South Korea and North Korea could work out a verifiable arms reduction agreement. But until then, the diplomat said, “You’d better not unilaterally change the power equation.”

Public sentiment often overlooks such sophisticated arguments. Indeed, what used to be taken for granted now has to be explained. The newspaper Chosun Ilbo said in a recent editorial that people calling for the withdrawal of U.S. troops overlook “the dreadful military strength of North Korea.” And it added, “that is why American troops are here.”

Naive Reality

Park Jun Kyu, head of a National Assembly team negotiating with North Korean legislators, said: “Many youths and intellectuals think that if the Americans were gone, unification would happen right away. That’s naive but nonetheless a reality.”

Prof. Rhee said he felt a need to remind the Korean people, in a newspaper column, that Communist ties will never substitute for South Korea’s alliance with the United States. It is only the alliance, he said, that makes ties with the Communist world possible.

Roh told an interviewer that he is in no hurry to alter the command structure, or to get U.S. headquarters out of Seoul. But a close aide to Roh, who asked not to be identified by name, said that in fact Roh wants to do both before the end of his term in 1993.

And Prof. Rhee said: “If Roh can’t solve those two problems during his administration, there will be no way to keep the lid on domestic politics.”

So far, neither goal has been taken very seriously.

‘Identifiable Movement’

“What Roh wants,” the diplomat said, “is some identifiable movement. He wants to be remembered as the president who brings the security relationship more into line with Korean aspirations.”

The United States has agreed only to a study of the command structure that will produce recommendations next year. South Koreans will be given a larger role in the Combined Forces Command, according to one source, but the key issue of replacing the American general at the top will not be mentioned.

Rhee said this situation cannot last.

‘Nationalistic Sentiment’

The Korean people, he said, as well as “generals from the younger generation, with stronger nationalistic sentiment than their seniors, will not tolerate foreign command much longer.”

Rhee said he sees a need for South Korea to regain operational control of its troops in order to pursue peace with North Korea.

“As long as operational control remains in the hands of the United States, North Korea will not accept South Korea as an equal partner,” he said.