Category: US-ROK Alliance

UPDATE: OFK and the Marmot’s Hole has more on the billion dollar tribute to North
Korea.

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US and Korea conclude USFK cost sharing agreement:

South Korea and the United States on Wednesday struck a deal to increase Seoul’s share of the cost of maintaining American soldiers here in 2007 and 2008 by 6.6 percent, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

Korea will contribute a total of 725.5 billion won ($780 million) next year, up 45.1 billion won from its share this year, and its share in 2008 will be 725.5 billion won plus the rate of inflation in 2007, ministry officials said.

“We could conclude the agreement with the U.S. side on the phone,’’ a ministry official said. “Both sides are not totally content with the result of the negotiations, but I think it is the most reasonable result based on the spirit of the Seoul-Washington alliance.’’

The deal was struck after six rounds of negotiations between Seoul and Washington.

South Korea is going to contribute $780 million dollars to USFK next year which is still less than half the overall USFK costs. Prior to this agreement South Korea payed roughly 40% of USFK’s costs; this new agreement means they are paying roughly 46% of costs.

Let’s compare the $780 million dollar cost sharing agreement to the amount of money Seoul sends to North Korea. While North Korea was busy creating international instability with their ballistic missile and nuclear bomb tests, the South Korean government was busy sending them a record amount of humanitarian aid. The South Korean government sent $227 million dollars worth of humanitarian aid while private donors in South Korea sent $70 million dollars worth of humanitarian aid for a grand total of roughly $300 million dollars in humanitarian aid to North Korea.

On top of the humanitarian aid, the Korean government this year sent 650 billion won or about $690 million dollars in inter-Korean economic aid to North Korea to finance joint Korean ventures such as the Kaesong Industrial Project the and Kumgang Tour operations.

So if you add up the humanitarian aid and economic aid sent to North Korea by South Korea this year, it comes up to nearly $1 billion dollars in aid while the South Korean government payed only 40% of the cost sharing for the US-ROK alliance for a total $735 million dollars. In effect the South Korean government is willing to pay the North Koreans more money than they are willing to pay for cost sharing of the US-ROK alliance that has been responsible for ensuring the economic, political, and national security of the nation for over 50 years.

Then to make matters worse the US negotiators had to then haggle for months to get the South Korean government to raise their cost sharing contributions by a only 6.6% to $780 million dollars this year while planning on continuing to give North Korea a billion dollars in aid next year despite their provacative ballistic missile and nuclear tests.

One Free Korea has a great analysis of this Chosun article that discusses OPLAN: 5029 which as far as the ROK government is concerned is treated as if it is a dirty word:

The South Korean and U.S. defense chiefs in October gave the green light to strategic guidelines known as Concept of Operations Plan 5029, which include outlines for a joint response to sudden changes in North Korea. This will allow the two armies to cooperate in giving concrete shape to the plan, devised during the Kim Dae-jung administration in 1999, and ensure they are ready to deal with North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction.

A government source on Thursday said then-defense minister Yoon Kwang-ung and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed off on the strategic guidelines in October. “Under the strategy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command will complete CONPLAN 5029 by the end of next year,” the source added. The plan has been controversial between the two nations. North Korea, Seoul fears, will be particularly sensitive about the plan, which prepares for contingencies such as a sudden crisis in North Korea as the Stalinist country suffers tighter international sanctions over its nuclear test. Details of the guidelines have not been released, but they reportedly include ways of handling a seizure of North Korean WMD by hypothetical rebel insurgents and their attempt to take them out of the country, and a mass exodus of North Korean refugees.

The South Korean reluctance to plan for the internal collapse of North Korea, something that is just as likely to happen as second Korean War, should be looked at as ideology compromising the national security of the nation. A collapse of North Korea with no contingency plan between South Korea and the US would make the incompentent occupation planning before the Second Gulf War look like the second coming of the Marshall Plan.
The Roh administration’s incompentence to plan is clearly evident now that North Korea misbehaved any way by testing their ballistic missiles in July and their recent nuclear test.

Read OFK for a whole lot more analysis on OPLAN: 5029 controversy.

It looks like the operational control issue isn’t the only thing maybe needing a ultimatum to get completed:

South Korea and the United States on Wednesday resumed talks on how to share expenses for maintaining American soldiers here, with Seoul hoping to conclude the negotiations this time.

“We hope to strike a deal this time, given that we don’t have much time left to get the National Assembly’s approval on the result this year,” Cho Tae-yong, director-general of the North American affairs bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, recently told reporters.

The two-day session in Seoul, aimed at renewing the Special Measures Agreement (SMA), is the sixth of its kind this year.

Technically, it is necessary for the ministry to get the lawmakers’ approval before the agreement goes into effect next year. But there was an exemption of the rule in 2005 when the cost-sharing talks ended four months after the deadline.

The US negotiators have been trying to get South Korea to pay more for the maintenance of USFK because South Korea only pays approximately 40% of the costs of maintaining the alliance while next door neighbor Japan pays approximately 70% of the costs of maintaining the USFJ forces in Japan. The US would be happy to get South Korea just to pay 50% of the upkeep but it appears the negotiators probably won’t even get that:

After several months of discussion with Washington, Seoul agreed in April 2005 to allocate 680.4 billion won ($710 million) per year in 2005 and 2006 to pay for the presence of U.S. Forces Korea (USFK).

That was a decrease of 8.9 percent from the 2004 expenditure.

During the five rounds of talks in the past, Seoul wanted to reduce its burden further, as Washington is determined to cut U.S. troop numbers.

But Washington called for an “equitable” sharing of the expenses, saying it made an exception when it agreed to reduce South Korea’s burden for 2005 and 2006 because Seoul was under financial pressure because of its dispatch of non-combat troops to Iraq.

If the US is only going to get a one digit increase from the South Koreans that means that Korea will not even pay 50% of the USFK costs. It appears that the US negotiators are now paying for the mistake of giving the South Koreans incentive to dispatch troops to Iraq by temporarily cutting costs for the past two years due to the troop dispatch to Iraq. Plus what did the US get out of the troop dispatch? Improved plumbing?

What annoys me most about this is that the South Koreans are willing to give hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the North Koreans, the ones who threaten the very existence of the country, while playing penny pinchers with USFK which is dedicated to preserving the existence of the nation.

Another thing that annoys me is that I often hear from average South Koreans that the Korean government gives special pay to the USFK soldiers. This is absolutely untrue but it seems to persist within Korean society. Feel free to add your thoughts if anyone disagrees.

Some of you garrison guys out there can correct me if I’m wrong, but most the money from the Korean government goes to renovating or making new buildings, which with the reduction of USFK camps from 41 to 10 means the Korean government is getting many of the buildings back. It also goes to paying the salaries of Korean employees that work for USFK. Additionally South Korea gets a discount in their cost sharing by providing USFK with civilian vehicles. The civilian vehicles are bought at discounted rates but when considered in the cost sharing their are totalled up at their full retail sale price.

Like I said before this is all penny pinching stuff that Koreans are notorious for unless of course it Kim Jong-il demanding aid, then it seems that everyone in the Korean government is stumbling over each other to provide him whatever he wants.

Maybe the Korean government was hoping the command transfer issue would be forgotten with the ouster of former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld? They thought wrong:

The four-star army general stressed the need for a firm date for the transfer of operational control. He said that without a fixed date, the two militaries would not be able to draw up new joint war plans or secure military funding and equipment that would correspond to the changing military structure.

“It’s like rolling out new products. In about six months, that (fixed date) will give everybody a lot of confidence with regard to the ability of the alliance between the two countries,’’ said Bell, who concurrently serves as chief of Combined Forces Command (CFC) and United Nations Command (UNC).

He reaffirmed that the U.S. military would provide intelligence “bridging capabilities’’ centered on surveillance and reconnaissance assets to the South Korean military if needed even after Seoul exercises independent wartime control of its armed forces.

This is really reaching a point of absurdity that the Korean government has yet to agree on a date for the hand over considering President Roh said the ROK Army could take operational control now if needed. As I have speculated before, President Roh is trying to drag out the handover to where it is implemented well after he has left office and any economic and political reprecussions he will have successfully avoided.

Maybe it is time for the USFK commander to issue an ultimatum like General Garry “Give Me My Damn Bombing Range” Trexler did in order to get a command handover date. It is sad when threats and ultimatums appear to be the only way to get major issues settled between USFK and the Korean government.

It looks like General Trexler’s ultimatum worked. From Yonhap:

South Korea has finally approved the construction of an electronic weapons scoring system on an island southwest of the mainland, a move expected to kickstart firing exercises by United States pilots stationed there soon, a government official said Sunday.

The approval came after nearly a year of postponement amid protests from residents at the designated island site on Jikdo, some 70 kilometers off the port city of Gunsan.

Like many issues in Korea, it is all about the Benjamins:

The altitude of the bombers will increase to 4-5 km, from the current 600 m, to minimize noise, while the controlled sea area where fishing boats are banned is to be reduced from a radius of 18 to 9 to provide more fishing area. Gunsan city will be given W300 billion (US$1=W947) and other incentives by the government.

The next step by the anti-US groups will be to claim noise pollution and environmental damage on Jikdo once the Air Force begins training there. Eventually I wouldn’t be surprised if the groups try to take a boat to Jikdo to protest and delay training exercises there to increase tensions between USFK and the Korean authorities. Jikdo is just a short term solution to what will continue to be a long term problem for USFK.

It is becoming more and more clear that the US military seems to care more about the security of Korea than Korea’s own president:

President Roh Moo-hyun on Wednesday said Korea is capable of exercising sole wartime operational control of its troops ¿even if we get it back now.¿ In an interview with the Yonhap news agency, the president said, ¿The South Korean military’s capability is sufficient and it can get U.S. military support.” The remarks pour oil on the flames of controversy by suggesting that what Seoul calls the ¿withdrawal¿ of operational control will be possible to achieve even before the 2012 timeframe the government has set. Scores of foreign and security affairs experts including 13 former defense ministers say even 2012 is unfeasible.

What I find interesting is that President Roh who is not a military man, yet he thinks he is a better security expert for the country than all the military and former defense ministers who say Korea will not even be ready for sole operational war time control by 2012. Basically what President Roh is doing is playing again to his domestic political base by saying Korea could take back control now, but he is also like the Chosun article said, trying to hedge his bet by maintaining that Korea should stick to the 2012 timeline. For reasons I have discussed before, President Roh wants to keep that 2012 timeline for his own political reasons.

President Roh is right about one thing, the ROK Army does have sufficient capability to defeat a North Korean attack now. What President Roh fails to look at is if war broke out what additional cost would the country absorb with no immediate US support? How many more lives in South Korea would be lost during a North Korean attack than they would with an immediate US counterattack? President Roh is playing around with the potential lives of many Koreans because he hopes the North Koreans will not strike South Korea if the US does redeploy it’s forces from Korea. Someone in the military does not plan around hope, military people plan around reality.

The US operational control turn over and camp consolidation plan were all closely planned in conjunction with the ROK military’s transformation in order to ensure that the national security of the country was not compromised due to these changes on both sides of the alliance. However, a good plan the military officials on each side came up with is being compromised by those with their own axe to grind and political ambitions. Than again it is easy for a Korean politician to plan around hope when they know when the kimchi hit’s the fan, the Yankee cavalry will save your ass anyway.

I wrote in a posting a year ago that the Korean government at least owes the United States military an honorable face saving redeployment of forces from the peninsula. My argument centers around that if the Korean government wanted USFK to reduce or redeploy forces from the peninsula it should be done in a face saving way in which it doesn’t appear that the US is retreating from South Korea due to rabid anti-Americanism running out of control in the country. The US should be able to redeploy forces off the peninsula with honor; however the ruling South Korean government thinks otherwise:

Seoul also insists on the loaded term ¿withdrawal¿ as the official designation for the project. “Since the issue first came up, the U.S. has asked Korea not use the word ‘withdrawal’,” the government official said. “But Cheong Wa Dae at the urging of the National Security Council has insisted.¿

The above comment was made in reference to the negotiations currently going on between the US and Korean governments over the handover of war time operational control of the ROK military and the US force reductions on the peninsula. The current Korean government is openly anti-American and seems determined to make the reduction of USFK an embarrassing “withdrawal” for the United States with public comments from the government and the Korean President Roh Moo-hyun about the US using failed policy with North Korea, encouragement of anti-Americanism in Korea, delay of the Camp Humphreys camp consolidation plan with violent anti-US protests, giving government subsidies to these violent anti-US groups, the fraudulent environmental issue, distribution of pro-North Korea propaganda in Seoul, and the denying of a bombing range for the US Air Force for a few quick recent examples off the top of my head.

All of this is maybe reaching a point where the US government may have had enough:

The U.S. is playing tit-for-tat by offering to hand over wartime operational control of troops to Korea at what experts say is the unfeasibly early date of 2009-2010, a high-ranking official speculated Monday. Seoul aims at the ¿withdrawal¿ of wartime control of Korean troops, as it is officially termed, in six years¿ time. “Perhaps this is a counterattack motivated by anger because [U.S. authorities] feel Korea is seeking the 2012 withdrawal for political reasons,” the official said.

A Korean source quoted a U.S. official as saying in recent bilateral discussions that Korea will not realistically be ready to exercise independent control of its forces even by 2012, but since that deadline appeared to be politically motivated, there was no reason for Washington to cling to military logic either.

The above statement comes on the heels of the uni-lateral handover of vacated USFK camps plus an announcement today of further USFK troop reductions below the 25,000 number agreed upon with the South Korean government:

The United States will lower troop levels in South Korea beyond a previously agreed reduction to 25,000, but the cut will not be “substantial,” a senior defense official said on Monday. “As the adjustments (in capabilities) take place, there will be a reduction in the number of U.S. forces located in the Republic of Korea beyond the level of 25,000 that we’ve currently agreed to,” the official said.

What the current South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun is trying to do is score domestic points with his political base in South Korea for standing up to the US on what are basically hypocritical and demagogued issues, while at the same time avoiding the fall out of a USFK pull out during his presidency. The Korean president is limited to one 5 year term and next year President Roh’s term ends and with approval ratings in the 20 percentile he will probably leave office as the greatest lame duck president in Korean history. His unpopularity will probably open the door for a South Korean conservative to regain the presidency.

However, if President Roh can keep the operational control handover date at 2012, that would mean the possible conservative president in power at the time will be blamed for when the country’s economy bottoms out from the USFK pull out. A pull out does not happen over night. It will probably be a 2 year process which if the operational control happens in 2012 that means 2010 the first US forces will start to leave the country, right in the middle of the presidency of the next Korean president. This would open the door for another Korean liberal to take power in the 2012 election if that president is held responsible for the country’s economic woes. However, if the hand over happens in 2009 that means the first forces will start pulling out next year, during President Roh’s term in office. Any bottoming out of the Korean economy will fall squarely on his shoulders and will forever be his legacy as he leaves office.

The old guard of Korea’s security understands very well the game that President Roh is playing and have now begun mobilizing to stop the hand over of operational control from the US to Korea:

A group of senior military experts including 13 former defense ministers have urged Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung to stop seeking the return of wartime operational control from the U.S. The meeting came at Yoon’s invitation on Wednesday.

It is rare for the contents of such a meeting to be made public, especially when it focuses on a call to end a core government project.

The group included Lee Sang-hoon and other former defense ministers as well as retired Gen. Paik Sun-yup and former vice defense minister Lee Jung-rin. They said now is not the time to reclaim wartime operational control of troops but rather the moment to strengthen the Korea-U.S. alliance.

These old defense ministers fought and lived through the Korean War plus helped build the country into the economic miracle that is today, knowing full well it would not have been possible without the assistance of the United States. So now they see one Korean presidency undoing the 50 years of work they have done to keep the US-Korea alliance strong and beneficial to the economy and most importantly the security of South Korea. In fact this is the advice that these ministers have given to USFK officials:

¿I¿ve sought a meeting with Gen. [Bell], the commander of the U.S. Forces Korea. If I meet him, I¿ll suggest that he ignores what the South Korean government says.¿

These statements have even led some to speculate that South Korea may be headed for a military coup if the current Roh policies remain in effect. Military coups have happened before in South Korea so it wouldn’t be stretch to say it couldn’t happen again. For the sake of South Korean democracy let’s hope this doesn’t occur and that these issues can be worked out before something drastic such as a military coup happens.

Obviously it is interesting times in South Korea and the coming months are really going to shape the future of Korea for decades to come. The South Korean media has now circled the wagons and have become extremely critical of the Korean president with articles such this, this, this, and this. All these competing dynamics in South Korea means that for USFK, leaving the country with honor is easier said than done.

However, shouldn’t liberation from the Japanese after World War II, 36,000 lives lost during the Korean War, and over 50 years of stability and economic development on the Korean peninsula provided by the United States be at least worth an honorable redeployment of US forces from the Korean peninsula? Is that asking too much?

From the Chosun:

An Asia specialist with the U.S. Congressional Research Service has presented a report to Congress suggesting the U.S. Defense Department is pushing to change the military command structure as a means to drastically reduce the role of the U.S. Forces Korea. Larry Niksch drew up the 16-page report after North Korea’s volley of missile launches earlier this month, saying part of the plans is thought to be putting the U.S. Forces Korea under the U.S. Army First Corps whose headquarter is to move from Washington State to Camp Zama in Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture near Tokyo.

That would also mean lowering the rank of the USFK commander and changes in the UN Command in Korea, which have taken orders from a four-star general since the Korean War.

Niksch’s analysis could mean that moves to downgrade the military relationship with South Korea reportedly instigated by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld are well underway. A former high-ranking official in the Bush administration told Grand National Party lawmaker Park Jin last week that Rumsfeld wanted to bring the Korea-U.S. alliance down to a level similar to Washington¿s relationships with the Philippines or Thailand.

The US military’s relationship with both Thailand and the Philippines consists of joint training exercises and not large permanently stationed troops. If this proposal gets approved the US-ROK alliance would for all intents and purposes be over. I think that will probably mean the US-ROK relationship would then be composed of a routine deployment of a Stryker brigade for annual exercises with the ROK Army and maybe keeping the PATRIOT batteries in place until the ROK Army can buy their own. The way it looks now the Air Force will be gone soon unless the Korean government gives them the bombing range they need to train their pilots. No matter what happens I think the writing is clearly on the wall.

The former foreign minister to the current Roh Moo-hyun administration had some very interesting things to say in today’s Chosun Ilbo about the US-ROK relationship:

Prof. Yoon Young-kwan, who served as the first foreign minister of the current administration, said in a lecture to a Korean Federation of Teachers¿ Associations affiliate on Monday, “Despite becoming the 10th largest economy in the world, the consciousness of South Korea remains in turn-of-the-19th-century resistant nationalism and passive concepts of independence, desperate to get out from under the influence of the Great Powers. We have to pursue positive independence taking advantage of our relations with these powers to achieve our national interests.” Yoon cited the former German chancellor Helmut Kohl as representing a spirit of genuine independence when he achieved German unification through close diplomatic ties with the U.S. Germany achieved unification by overcoming fears of a united Germany in neighboring countries or former enemies like France, the Soviet Union, Britain and Poland through cooperation with Washington.

Make sure you read the whole article because it is a good read, but I think there is a reason why this guy is no longer the foreign minister; because he makes sense compared to people like this.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Korean defensive officials have agreed to “appropriately accelerate” the operation control of the ROK Army issue:

Korea and the U.S. have agreed to “appropriately accelerate” discussion on the return of wartime operational control, which currently rests with the U.S. It was one of 13 points agreed at the 37th annual bilateral Security Consultative Meeting here headed by Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung and his U.S. counterpart Donald Rumsfeld.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld speaks at a press conference after the annual Korea-U.S. Security Consultative Meeting at the Defense Ministry in Yongsan, Seoul on Friday.

To an official request from Korea for the return of wartime command, Rumsfeld said he agreed with Seoul but cautioned matters must proceed to ensure they help peace on the Korean Peninsula. Sources close to the talks said the joint statement pledged to “appropriately accelerate” discussions. Asked what that meant, Rumsfeld told a joint press conference after the meeting, “It’ll take place at the moment when the Republic of Korea and the United States of America decide it’s appropriate.”

Notice he doesn’t say when this acceleration is going to take place. He only says when appropriate. The whole issue of the Korean government taking operational control from the United States during war time is nothing but an empty slogan to play to Korean nationalism since President Roh Moo-hyun’s approval ratings are in the twenty percentile range.

Think about this logically. If Korea takes operational control during a conflict with North Korea do you for one minute think that the US government will allow ROK Army generals to command US stealth fighters, tomahawk cruise missiles, submarines, AEGIS destroyers, B-52’s, etc. during a war? The ROK Army generals are fine infantry, land warfare commanders for their theater of operations here on the Korean peninsula but, they are not trained or have the war time experience to properly implement the the combined arms fight that the US military can bring down on an enemy.

If Korea wants operational control they may just end up regretting it if the US military pulls out of Korea. Not that the ROK Army cannot win a war with North Korea because it most probably could, however victory is not certain without the US militaries involvement. The ROK military does not have the capability to conduct critical war time missions such as precision bombing over North Korea’s rear areas or collecting usable signal intelligence. These lack of capabilities even if the ROK military were to win a war would make any war here longer and more devastating than it needed to be. Is national pride worth the stategic consequences? For President Roh, that is a yes.

I’m actually for pushing this issue of the ROK military getting operational control because that would force them to buy capabilities they need to replace some of those currently provided by the US military. For every capability replaced by the ROK military that means a US military capability is then open to be used elsewhere to support the GWOT.

I wonder if Rumsfeld cook this whole idea up as a way to get troops out of Korea? Anyway, Korea likes to let the world know that they have the world’s 11th largest economy, so it is time to start using that affluence to buy the capabilities that they would lose once they do get operational control. If they don’t and the US military leaves, I sure hope for all the citizens here that the Sunshine Policy works because a war here would be absolutely devastating.

However, keep in mind that if a war were to occur on the Korean peninsula these same people crying about operational control now will be the same people begging the US military to come back and fight in a second Korean War. Hopefully it doesn’t come down to that.