SOUTH KOREA Should Be Kicked Off the U.S. Defense Dole

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), March, 1999 by Doug Bandow

Should Be Kicked Off the U.S. Defense Dole

"Seoul and Washington should negotiate a phased withdrawal of American forces and termination of the Mutual Defense Treaty, replacing them with a cooperative military and political relationship among equals."

The world may have become a friendlier place for democracy, but the Republic of Korea (ROK) is finding the transition to be tempestuous. South Korea's economy has crashed, as Seoul pays the price for decades of crony capitalism. Political turbulence has arrived with the election of outsider Kim Dae Jung as president.

Yet, this stormy passage also represents something else--the ROK's maturation from adolescent to adult. A decade ago, Seoul was ruled by a military dictatorship. Mass street protests forced elections in 1987. Kim, the grand old man of Korean politics (running in his fourth campaign), won by a razor-thin margin in a vote badly splintered by region. Politics almost certainly will remain highly fractious in coming years, but the country no longer seems unstable.

Economic progress has been even greater. Years of double-digit growth have moved South Korea into the lower ranks of industrialized states. Although the ROK's per capita gross domestic product (GDP) trails those of Hong Kong, Japan, and Taiwan, Seoul has jumped ahead of most of its neighbors. South Korea's recent economic travails actually highlight its success in having become a major participant in the international system. The ROK simply has paid the price of extensive government subsidies to the major chaebols (industrial conglomerates).

Despite its economic and political growth, Seoul remains underdeveloped internationally. Militarily, South Korea essentially is where it was in 1953--dependent on Washington. The U.S maintains a Mutual Defense Treaty that is mutual in name only, stations 37,000 soldiers on the peninsula, and backs up its commitment with forces throughout the Pacific and at home. All told, Americans spend as much to defend the ROK--about $15,000,000,000 annually--as the South Koreans do.

The genesis of the Korean commitment was the messy conclusion of World War II and the ensuing Cold War. Artificially divided between U.S. and Soviet occupation, the Korean peninsula erupted into an internationalized civil war in 1950. Three years of combat left the borders largely unchanged, but the truce never was turned into a peace treaty and the two Koreas remain formally at war. U.S. forces have acted as the ROK's ultimate guarantor ever since.

There were two keys to Seoul's success. The first was to move in a broadly market-oriented direction. South Korean-economic policy never was laissez-faire, but the ROK generally relied on private entrepreneurship and export-driven growth. This contrasted sharply with Pyongyang's autarchic economic policies, which have led to near economic collapse.

Almost as critical was the South's decision not to respond to the North's military buildup. The ROK Ministry of National Defense acknowledges that Seoul did not begin its "force improvement program" until "12 years later than North Korea." Instead, South Korea "concentrated on its economic and social development" despite the dire military threat from the North.

This strategy worked. The ROK has about 24 times the GDP of North Korea. South Korea has twice the North's population, the ability to borrow heavily in international markets, and extensive high-tech industries. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) welshed on its international debts, has been suffering through several years of negative growth, and can not feed its own population. Indeed, a vast amount of people in the North are starving.

Equally significant, Seoul has stolen away North Korea's allies. Russia is paying off its debts to the South with military equipment, while China has far more trade with and investment from the South than the North. Pyongyang even is losing the allegiance of the Korean community in Japan, which long has provided the North with much of its hard currency. The matchup between the two Koreas could be compared to a battleship vs. a Chinese junk.

Yet, South Korea continues to be an American defense dependent. Seoul possesses a potent military, and the DPRK's military deficiencies are legion. CIA Director George Tenet told the U.S. Senate that "The [North Korean] military has had to endure shortages of food and fuel, increased susceptibility to illness, declining morale, often sporadic training, and a lack of new equipment." The North, however, possesses a significant numerical edge. Simple weight of numbers could lead to the destruction of Seoul even if North Korea ultimately (and quickly) lost the war.

Such problems don't bother officials in either Seoul or Washington as long as the U.S. protects the South. This continuing defense dependence seems to be leading, in turn, to economic dependence. South Korea was a major recipient of aid into the 1970s; not until 1969 did the South cover more than half the cost of its own defense budget. Washington still was providing significant amounts of security-oriented aid as late as 1986. On top of this was the direct American military subsidy in the form of the defense commitment and troop deployments. The ROK spent years investing the cash that it saved in the South Korean economy.