A US plan to cut its 37,500 troops in South Korea by a third by the end of next year has yet to be finalized and remains up for discussion, senior South Korean officials said yesterday.
South Korean and US officials taking part in military talks in Seoul on Monday announced the plan to cut 12,500 troops. It is part of a much broader global US realignment strategy.
"There still need to be negotiations," defense Minister Cho Young-kil was quoted as saying in a pool report before a Cabinet meeting at the presidential Blue House.
The same report quoted President Roh Moo-hyun's national security adviser, Kwon Jin-ho, as saying the proposed end-2005 timetable and the type of troops withdrawn were still negotiable.
The proposed troop cut includes the 3,600 US soldiers already earmarked to be redeployed to Iraq from the front lines of South Korea's defense against communist North Korea.
South Korean financial markets were unfazed by the announcement, with players focused more on economic factors. South Koreans questioned on the lunchtime streets of the capital, Seoul, showed no sign of nervousness.
"We should not rely on US forces forever," said 28-year-old writer Park Ji-eun. She said the move could improve relations with the North.
Washington announced late last year it aimed to transform its forces worldwide and use advances in military technology and smaller, more mobile units to better respond to new security needs and fight the war on terrorism.
The US plan to cut its troops on the peninsula by a third rattled the South more with the timing than its scale.
While South Korean officials denied the timing was a cause for concern, some newspapers said the pace would create a security vacuum before the South's defense can be upgraded.
"The Korean peninsula is one of the most vulnerable places in the world when it comes to security," the conservative Dong-a Ilbo said in an editorial yesterday. "We have to ask whether it is the right action for a 50-year ally to pull troops unilaterally from a potential conflict zone."
Yun Deok-min of the state-funded Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security said the US pullout plan should not be seen as a weakening of the two countries' alliance or of US commitment to defending the South.
"The alliance could just as well be broadened over the course of these consultations," which he said were in principle designed to benefit allies and not put one side at a disadvantage.
But Song Young-sun, a defense expert and member of parliament for the opposition Grand National Party, said the plan had caught the government by surprise and completely unprepared.
"Do we fix the cowshed after we've lost the cows? Of course we do," she said. That could include more defense spending, upgrading capabilities, savings from troop cuts or "asking the US military to stay."
People in Seoul were mostly sanguine, but there are concerns.
A 39-year-old police officer, Kim Jong-jin, said the 2005 timeframe was premature and the struggling South Korean economy would be unable to finance a sharp increase in defense spending.
"We are not ready for the reduction mentally or financially, although we should achieve self-defense some day," he said.
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