The Koreanization of South Korea

In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter set off something of a panic in the Republic of Korea when he proposed--though he never carried out--a unilateral cut in U.S. military forces there. By contrast, Defense Secretary Dick Cheney’s new agreement with Seoul to withdraw up to 5,000 Americans over the next few years seems unlikely to raise even a ripple of concern. Times have changed, and one big sign of that is South Korea’s growing self-confidence, based on its increasing economic, political and military strength. It helps, too, that its enemy on the divided peninsula, the Communist north, now finds itself more internationally isolated than at any time in its history.

The threat of renewed military aggression from the north will remain especially credible so long as Kim Il Sung lives and remains in charge. Kim is the Soviet-installed dictator who has held near-absolute power for more than 40 years. He’s almost 78 now, but there’s no reason to think he has abandoned the goal of a reunified Korea that led him to invade the south in 1950. In an effort to establish the Communist world’s first dynasty and to ensure that his aims would be pursued, Kim has named his son as successor. Others in North Korea--in the military and higher echelons of the Communist Party--no doubt have ideas of their own about how the succession should be handled. The point is that North Korea remains militarily powerful and intensely committed ideologically. Given what has gone before, its potential for aggression must continue to be taken seriously.

What’s different now is that North Korea, should it risk war, can no longer expect to get the human and material help from the Soviet Union and China that it could count on in 1950. At a minimum, the foreknowledge that it would be on its own must limit any aggressive planning; probably it forces the rational assessment that war-making is simply out of the question. The trouble is that Kim, who has fostered an almost Pharaonic cult of personality, and who seems to believe in his own infallibility, can’t be counted on to behave rationally.

Which is why even after cutbacks take place, the United States will keep about 38,000 troops in South Korea, where they are likely to stay so long as the South Koreans want them and Washington calculates the threat from the north to be serious. The troop reductions agreed to in Seoul do nothing to diminish American dedication to South Korea’s defense. They are instead recognition of the changed nature of the threat that has occurred, and of the enormous recent progress South Korea has made.