US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld visited the tense front line between North and South Korea yesterday, meeting troops to be redeployed under a sweeping global reshuffle of American forces.
Rumsfeld assured South Korean leaders on Monday that Pentagon plans to realign the US military global "footprint" would not diminish America's ability to deter North Korea or leave Asia's fourth-largest economy vulnerable to the North's large army.
Rumsfeld flew by helicopter to Camp Casey -- one of 17 bases of the US Army Second Infantry Division and where 14,000 troops have embodied America's security commitment to South Korea, guaranteeing a US response to any North Korean attack.
The "2 ID" is clustered just 13km south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), a heavily mined no-man's land across which nearly 2 million soldiers from North and South Korea have faced off for decades.
"Our motto is `Fight Tonight' and we mean it," said Major Tamara Parker, a spokeswoman for the division.
"We appreciate what you're doing," Rumsfeld told young soldiers over lunch. "You are an outstanding unit."
The division will eventually be moved away from the border under a wide-ranging realignment plan endorsed on Monday by Rumsfeld and his South Korean counterpart. Some in Seoul worry the move may provoke North Korea.
Rumsfeld and South Korean Defense Minister Cho Young-kil have approved plans to reposition the 37,000 US troops stationed in the South, moving the Second Infantry Division and a large Seoul garrison to a hub of bases south of the capital, which lies about 50km south of the border.
The 50-year US-South Korean alliance has "been successful because we've had the ability to deter and defend and, if necessary, prevail and that has been well understood," Rumsfeld told a news conference at the Seoul Defense Ministry.
"I can assure you it will be well understood in the years ahead," Rumsfeld said at end of a weeklong trip to Japan and South Korea.
Throughout his trip, Rumsfeld has insisted that there were no plans for a possible withdrawal of some of the troops in South Korea. The Second Infantry Division is not due to be moved until the end of the decade.
Rumsfeld has touted technological developments that have multiplied US firepower, and the US is investing US$11 billion over three years to beef up its equipment in South Korea.
"The technology is amazing," said Rumsfeld, a 71-year-old former navy pilot, after watching battle simulations on the US$8 million Close Combat Tactical Trainer at Camp Casey.
He later flew south to Osan Air Base, where he was to tour other US military units before flying back to Washington.
The presence of US soldiers and state-of-the-art war hardware in populous areas near Seoul have caused friction with South Korea, which exploded in anti-US protests a year ago after two schoolgirls were crushed by a US Army minesweeping vehicle near where Rumsfeld was touring yesterday.
But Seoul has voiced unease at the US troop overhaul while a festering crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions remains unresolved. Some South Koreans fear the North could mistake the plan as a weakening of US resolve or as a prelude to attack.
The nuclear crisis with communist North Korea erupted in October last year when US officials said Pyongyang had admitted to a clandestine atomic weapons program that violated its international non-proliferation commitments.
US and Asian diplomats are working out a schedule for more talks aimed at halting Pyongyang's nuclear plans.
The DMZ is 240km long and 4km wide.
US officials estimate 70 percent of North Korea's 1.1-million-strong army and 4,000 of its 13,000 hardened artillery sites are deployed in offensive postures close to the DMZ. South Korea has about 650,000 active forces.
The armistice signed in 1953 halted fighting between US-led UN forces backing South Korea and communist Chinese and North Korean troops. But the truce has never been converted into a peace treaty, leaving the two Koreas in a technical state of war.
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