Today I attended a press conference where GEN Campbell announced that because of budget shortfalls created by the just negotiated Security Measures Agreement (SMA) with the ROK, some serious changes have to made in the way USFK operates. The SMA is the bilateral agreement on how much ROK contributes to certain costs associated with maintaining our forces in Korea. We wanted an increase, the ROK wanted to decrease its contribution, and apparently “succeeded”.
I’m not going to speculate on who’s right or wrong in this regard, but I do know some big changes are in store. To begin, it looks like 1000 Koreans will be put out of work. And some weapons systems previously promised to the ROK won’t be delivered anytime soon. Here’s how the Korea Times reported the story.
I think it is a shame really. It can’t do anything but weaken our ability to achieve our mission of deterring North Korean aggression. And in the long run it may cost ROK more than they save. Plus anytime you are dumping hundreds of workers into a weak economy you wreak havoc on many levels. Selfishly, I’m also worried how this might impact my ability to fill a critical vacancy on my staff. Well, we shall see how it all shakes out, but I don’t think it is gonna be pretty.
Seems to me the ROK needs us more than we do them (militarily speaking) and I wonder how this might impact the long term relationship in what has historically been a very successful alliance.
I think it right that the host government pay its fair share of the burden when our sole purpose for being here is to assist in defending their country. ROK says when its contriubtions in Iraq are factored in they have more than met their obligation. Maybe so. But the bottom line is still the bottom line, and I just don’t believe now is the time for the Koreans to be fooling around about money. It’s a dangerous world out there, and it might have just gotten a tad more dangerous here.
And my job just got a lot more complicated.
Well hopefully, they need fewer civilians since they have reduced the military presence. They could always stop paying the extortionate rents charged to Americans as well. Looks liek you will have to work a little harder but then you have nothing else to do withyour time, right?
By the way every comment and post is forever immortalized on the world wide web as proven in this link http://johnmccrarey.com/wp-stats.php?author=euroyank
may I retract some of my previous statements please?
Carol,US funding for USFK has not been cut. The shortfall is directly related to what the ROK has declined to contribute. So I believe the burden of the cutbacks is going to fall on the Koreans. A large reduction in force for Korean workers and we won’t be providing some state of the art weapons systems to the ROK as planned.
I specualte (and that’s all it is is my opinion, I do not speak from any actual knowledge of our motivations) is that the Pentagon is sending a message. Worldwide we are asking the countries to pick up a larger share of the cost for deployed troops. If they choose not to do so, we will take measures to reduce our costs that may be unpleasant, but the days of the US paying to defend other nations are coming to an end. I think that is probably a good thing. We ruined the Europeans by giving them a free ride all these years.
Euro, I know what you mean. You and Carol are by far my most prolific commenters, and even though neither of you have come to recognize that I am right and you are wrong 😛 I always treasure hearing from you.
It could be worse. I use my real name here and in comments on other blogs. I googled my name a while back and all those comments are floating around as reminders of my tendency to use extreme rhetoric when provoked. Had I known that I was not just speaking on some obscure blog I might have used more discretion in choosing my words. Alas.
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