NEWS ANALYSIS : Stance Shifts on U.S. Forces in S. Korea : Military: Congress earlier barred troop cuts; now, a reduction seems all but inevitable.

The Bush Administration and South Korea are for the first time apparently resigning themselves to the withdrawal of some U.S. troops from South Korea over the next few years.

Congressional pressure and South Korea’s increasing economic power and military capability make it all but certain that the Administration eventually will be required to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Korea below the current level of 43,000.

American forces have been in South Korea since the Korean War, and in the past, efforts to cut back the U.S. military presence have proved of extraordinary political sensitivity.

In 1978, President Jimmy Carter announced his intention to remove all but 14,000 Air Force and logistics personnel from South Korea, but he was forced to shelve the plan in the face of opposition from the Pentagon and Congress.

Now congressional sentiment appears to be changing. Last month a proposal to slash U.S. troop strength in Korea was defeated by a vote of 65 to 34 in the Senate. But members predict that Congress will probably act next year to make major changes in the American commitment there.

“Where do you get the most applause, Republicans and Democrats alike, when you go home and speak to the Rotary Club? When do they applaud the loudest? When you talk about burden sharing,” Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), who wants to bring home all of the U.S. forces in Korea, said on the Senate floor last month.

“Why do our allies not help themselves?” Bumpers continued. “Why is the United States, with a $160-billion to $170-billion deficit this year, spending $2.6 billion for that kind of presence in Korea when South Korea has twice as many people as North Korea?”

During this week’s visit to Washington by South Korean President Roh Tae Woo, both Presidents Bush and Roh reaffirmed the broad security ties between the two countries.

Yet at the same time, Bush Administration officials and South Korean leaders sought repeatedly to deflect specific questions about whether the United States will maintain the same level of U.S. troops in South Korea in the future as it has there now.

“We are not making the troop level, the number of troops, the measure of our security commitment,” said Richard H. Solomon, assistant secretary of state for Asia. South Korean Foreign Minister Choi Ho Joong told reporters that it is “premature” to talk about a reduction in U.S. forces in Korea.

U.S. and Korean officials also seem to be preparing for future cutbacks by pledging to one another that there will be “no surprises” and that any change in the U.S. troop deployment will be made only after talks between the two governments.

“By the mid-1990s, when South Korea’s capacity to defend itself has very much improved and there’s a reduction in tensions between North and South Korea, there will be troop reductions,” said Robert A. Scalapino of UC Berkeley’s Institute of East Asian Studies.

Such predictions are disturbing to Pentagon and National Security Council officials, who argue that the military threat posed by North Korea remains at least as serious as it ever has been.

The South Korean armed forces number 650,000. North Korea has an army of about 1 million. More than half are deployed just above the 38th Parallel, the dividing line between South and North Korea. The North Koreans have also acquired modern SA-5 surface-to-air missiles and MIG-29 planes.

South Korea currently covers 43% of the U.S. deployment costs.

ROHN ARRIVES IN L.A.--South Korea’s leader is on a good-will tour. B1