June 17, 2003	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 16, 1424

SEOUL: The two Koreas have reason to worry about the US decision to pull its troops back from Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that divides them — the South must now bear more of its defence spending burden, while the North sees it as yet another sign of an impending US attack.

These insecurities have been rising in the weeks since Washington announced this month that it would pull its troops and forces back by 120 metres from the DMZ. This transfer is expected to take place over years.

Some 37,000 US troops are stationed near the DMZ as part of the US tripwire strategy — in place since the division of the Korean peninsula in the fifties — to counter any attack from North Korea at the earliest stage.

At another time, the pullback of US troops would probably be considered a sign of peaceful and stable times ahead. Indeed, a few years ago, when North Korea appeared to emerge from diplomatic isolation, there was a lot of debate about how this could make possible the reduction of US forces on the Korean peninsula.

But Washington’s announcement — with no consent from South Korea, a US ally for decades — came at a sensitive time amid speculation on whether North Korea would be next in the US sights after Iraq and as pressure built on Pyongyang for its nuclear weapons programme.

“It is very ambiguous to tell whether this (pullout plan) is aimed at striking North Korea (as Pyongyang claims) or whether this could be another bargaining chip of the United States to bring North Korea to the table by using this as a threat,” Chun Sung-Hoon, senior researcher at South Korea’s Reunification Institute, said in an interview.

Now, South Korea is worried about having to cope with more of its defence needs and to fill the vacuum left near the DMZ due to the transfer of US troops.

Last week South Korea announced plans to boost defence spending from 2.7 per cent of GDP in 2003 and 3 per cent in 2004, plans that will include the acquisition of new weapons such as interceptor missiles, Aegis warships, military satellites and surveillance planes.

South Korean military experts worry that both Koreas are being forced into an arms race by Washington’s moves. There are 690,000 forces in the South Korean military and 1.17 million in North Korea’s.

“The US military relocation, if realized, could trigger a new round of arms race in North-east Asia,” said an editorial last week of the ‘Hangyere’ newspaper. “Yet, the US is adding pressure on Seoul to increase its share of defence spending.”

It is believed that the South is 20 to 30 per cent behind North Korea in military expenditures, although South Korea’s GDP is much bigger than the North’s. This ‘gap’ has been filled by the 37,000 US troops stationed in South Korea.

At the same time, there are misgivings here — in a country that has seen anti-US sentiment peak this year — about how US military presence may be as much of a problem as it is supposed to be a solution.

“A threat of war to Korea is posed not by North Korea but by the US,” argues Kang Jung-Goo, professor of Dong-Gook University here. “If North Korea is pushed hard by the US with an economic blockade, the regime might go even tougher, in which case Washington might use it as a cause to start a war after trying out a round of empty multilateral talks.”

The pullback of the US forces puts Seoul in a tight spot after decades of relying on the US security umbrella. After all, the idea was that if Washington makes a “surgical strike” on North Korea’s nuclear weapons sites, US troops at the DMZ would be the first target of Pyongyang’s conventional forces. This assumes that the US would naturally be involved in any war in Korea.

But the relocation of the US troops means they would be beyond target range of North Korea’s forces.

US military officials says it is part of posing a credible military threat, by making sure that US forces are not all within the range of North Korean artillery. But for South Koreans, this means that any North Korean attack or retaliatory action to a US strike would result in the two Koreas’ troops coming to war — and the likely non-involvement of US troops.

Pyongyang announced that it must depend on the nuclear deterrent to counter a US threat, and blasted the US pullback as a “dangerous ploy showing the US readiness to strike North Korea”.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.