[Kim Myong-sik] Trump sees USFK as mercenaries

Donald Trump wants to turn the 28,500 members of the U.S. Forces in Korea into mercenaries. He demands that the Korean government pay 100 percent of the cost for stationing U.S. troops here because he believes they are here solely to benefit Koreans. What an affront to the young American men and women who are proud to stand for the U.S. commitment to global peace and freedom!

Korea and the United States split the USFK bill roughly half and half because Seoul and Washington are aware that their deployment here serves the interests of both sides. Trump showed that he was absolutely ignorant of this cost-sharing arrangement between the two allies when he made such comments. When an interviewer corrected him, he tried to avoid embarrassment by calling the Korean contribution “peanuts.” Well, that supposed triviality amounted to 1 trillion won, or $886 million, of Korean taxpayers’ money in 2015.

To meet Trump’s demand, that amount would probably need to be doubled and if all the money goes to the USFK paycheck, one could call it mercenary employment. “Pay more or we leave,” threatens the “presumptive” Republican presidential candidate on his campaign trail.

In Donald Trump, we only see ignorance and obstinacy. We also are weary of having foreign soldiers stationed on this land for over 60 years after a war that brought in foreign forces.

But we know how history unfolded, and how the United States has been involved in this part of the world -- the division of the peninsula at the end of WWII, the Korean War, the ensuing Cold War confrontation and the security responsibility that America has since shouldered in this region. Trump does not seem to know or care at all.

Somebody should teach him a little bit of history. Throughout the latter half of the 20th century, South Korea stood as a shield against the communist expansionism which had to be thwarted in both the Western and Eastern hemispheres. For decades, since 36,000 American lives were sacrificed in the Korean War, the bilateral alliance called for Korean forces to help the United States in the wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq. Three thousand Korean soldiers died in Vietnam.

The fall of the South Vietnamese government in Saigon spurred an isolationist trend in the U.S.

When Jimmy Carter attempted to pull U.S. forces out of South Korea late in the 1970s, strong repercussions from civilian and military leaders with more balanced strategic thinking stalled this move and the USFK has continued to stay here with minor changes in their layout and overall strength.

Financial costs may loom large when business-trained people like Donald Trump are pondering matters, even including relations with allies bound by defense treaties. In their thought processes, money comes first before other important factors such as historical ties, geographical connections and economic interdependence. Moral values come last, thus the shameless chanting, “Pay more or we leave.”

The present split of the USFK budget was the result of strenuous negotiations between officials of the two allies on the basis of mutual recognition that their presence is necessary for the security of Korea and the region. A recent research paper by the Center for Strategic and International Studies reported that Japan pays roughly $2 billion for the 52,000 U.S. troops present in its territory while Germany is billed $3.8 billion for the 36,000 U.S. personnel in its territory.

Still, Trump insists on 100 percent host payment for the U.S. forces in Japan and Germany as well. The varied proportions of cost-sharing in these two countries indicate that financial capabilities alone do not decide the formula: What matters is the relative roles of the host and guest forces in the security situation of the respective regions. And it should be noted that the Pentagon is actually saving money by keeping sizeable U.S. forces in overseas bases -- a fact Trump does not understand.

Unfortunately politics affects the defense commitments of nations and sometimes results in a waste of time in correcting inconsiderate decisions.

We have witnessed it in the past over the question of wartime operational control of Korean forces by the USFK commander. During the Roh Moo-hyun presidency, the transfer schedule was set for 2012, but the Lee Myung-bak administration deferred this to the end of 2015. In 2014, Seoul requested a further postponement and the two allies agreed that the transfer would take place sometime in the middle of the 2020s.

If Trump were elected U.S. president, he would demand renegotiating the USFK cost-sharing arrangement to a ratio significantly different from the present 50-50 split with the threat of possible withdrawal. He would not bother to raise the operational control issue because he would not be particularly interested in who would be in command of the allied forces in the event of a war in which he believes Koreans should defend themselves.

Well, we are ready to fight and die in defense of our country with or without American help. As a young man, I stood guard in the freezing cold of the frontline hills with the determination to sacrifice my life to protect my family and people. As a young American collegian during the years of the Vietnam War, Donald Trump got draft deferment on four separate occasions until finally he received a dubious medical exemption that hardly befitted his healthy appearance at the time. 

Trump calls Kim Jong-un of the North a maniac. That maniac is aiming his short-range rockets and missiles against South Korea and intercontinental missiles across the Pacific Ocean to Guam and further to continental U.S.

If the unpredictable North Korean leader launches an attack, the ROK Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps are poised to strike as one body on the North Korean batteries, command posts and airfields, with U.S. ground, air and naval forces here and at nearby bases.

A military alliance is a sacred affair that requires the sacrifice of thousands of lives as partners strive to fulfill the promise of mutual defense. To break off an alliance merely over the question of financial cost – based on false logic -- amounts to massive irresponsibility. In Trump’s world, there is no such thing as regional and global security arrangements, collective efforts for peace or international trust. But, let us not worry too much. American voters deserve a better president than Donald Trump, I believe. 

By Kim Myong-sik

Kim Myong-sik is a former editorial writer for The Korea Herald. He can be reached at kmyongsik@hanmail.net – Ed.