U.S. might move, pull troops from S. Korea
Drez
By Pamela Hess
Pentagon Correspondent
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 (UPI) -- Even as nuclear tensions mount with
North Korea, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Thursday he wants
to shift some of the 37,000 U.S. forces out of Seoul, South Korea, and
the demilitarized zone, and might recall some of them to the United
States......
"I'd like to see a number of our forces move away from the Seoul
area and from the area near the ... DMZ and be more oriented towards
an air hub and a sea hub, with the ability to reinforce so there's
still a strong deterrent, and possibly, with our improved capabilities
of moving people, some of those forces come back home," he told the
Senate Armed Services Committee.
Rumsfeld said the United States has been working on the plan for
many months and would discuss it with the South Korean government
soon.
The U.S. troops have been in Korea for more than 50 years,
serving as a deterrent to a North Korean invasion. They would fight
beside a force of more than 600,000 South Koreans and are largely
poised as a counter-invasion force, swinging into action after the
South Korean military has absorbed the first blow, according to
military analysts.
With new nuclear tensions, recent warming of relations with North
Korea, and a number of high-profile criminal cases and accidents
involving American military personnel and Korean civilians, anti-U.S.
sentiment is on the rise in South Korea.
Korea Gallup conducted an opinion poll indicating that more than
53 percent of South Koreans surveyed said they disliked the United
States, up from 15 percent in 1994. The percentage of those who said
they liked the United States fell from nearly 64 percent in 1994 to 37
percent, the Washington Post reported in early January.
North Korea broadcast a New Year's message in January calling on
"all the Koreans in the North and the South and abroad" to confront
the United States. "It can be said that there exists on the Korean
Peninsula at present only confrontation between the Koreans in the
North and the South and the United States," the message said.
In October, the United States said North Korea admitted to having
produced and stockpiled enriched uranium in contravention of a 1994
agreement under which it had promised to abandon its nuclear program
-- albeit plutonium-based -- in exchange for fuel oil and two
light-water reactors.
The light-water reactor project was supposed to be finished in
2003 but has been delayed by construction problems at least five
years. U.S. President George W. Bush labeled North Korea as one of the
members of the "axis of evil" in January 2001.
http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20030213-065335-9502r.htm
J. L. S.
guess that would solve the problem of reunification! The PDRK would
sweep south in no time and all those American haters in ROK would find a
real evil to direct their disgust.