I will however, continue to speak out against the un-Consitutionality of our presence here, and hope that the changes necessary to get our country back on course will come about.

I recall around the time of the Seoul Olympics, one Korean national assemblyman who was Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in a moment of rare candor said on the floor of the Assembly that “we shouldn’t think in terms of anti-Americanism or pro-Americanism, but rather we should think of Americans as mercenaries, someone we pay to protect us.”

In response, I sent that particular Assemblyman a tersely worded letter in Korean informing him that Americans were not mercenaries and asking him how he would like being referred to as a “prostitute National Assmemblyman.” He apparently didn’t appreciate my letter as I soon learned from sources in the headquarters that he had complained directly to the USFK Commander’s office about having received such an inflammatory letter from a US Army officer who, in sending such a letter, was interfering in internal politics of Korea. Fortunately for me, either the general or someone else in his ofice was amused by the whole affair and nothing came of it.

Are the Korean people ungrateful or simply ungreat?

By the way, I guess its clear I am an ESLer I wrote

“all thinks Korean”

Its pretty clear that at least two of those words should never go together

what about:

7) Studies in ungreatfulness: Koreas unpaid debt to China, Japan and the USA.

6) Korean global domination of the oldest profession.

1) Paper Citizens: Korean-UN-Americans and their UN-assimilation.

2) Korean Biographies: Cho Seoun Hui, Robert Kim and others

3) Korean food Series: Dog Meat

4) The real Korean wave: How Asian communities who have a large influx of Koreans feel about them.

5) Why you should boycott all thinks Korean.

Those are just some ideas GI, of course I will support anything I say with research. What do you think? Any additions?

I see no chance of it happening. And I base my opinion mostly on the pure power of the status quo: changing something as massive as USFK and the US-SK military alliance is a mammoth undertaking with all kinds of hurdles. We’re talking billions to trillions of dollars, and it is so much easier to continue paying the billions we already do under the current situation than spent just as much and more money in the short term to change things. Bureaucracies tend to have a life of their own and are hard to kill.

On the strategic arguments against pulling out — I won’t offer links, but I’d say go look at some of the stuff on Korea done at the CATO Institute — they have a couple of guys who have been laying out the argument for pulling out of Korea for several years. By reading them, you will find out what others are saying in favor of keeping troops in Korea by how the CATO people argue against their specific ideas.

I don’t remember hearing this idea for a couple of years - but one of the common arguments against pulling out of Korea used to be that such a move would naturally lead to us having to pull out of Japan as well.

….I never bought into that at all.

One idea you do hear regularly repeated today in favor of staying is that — if the US pulls out, South Korea will automatically swing into China’s sphere of influence, and China will use that to attempt to push the US out of East Asia altogether or at least hamper US Asia policy.

By the way Shattered, I have long read USinKorea and respect his work so that is why I asked him to post here in order to diversify the site a bit and relieve some blogging pressure on me as my own work commitments increase.

However, I will probably make a posting about this later on announcing this but I am willing to except contributions from others if they have well formed and backed up opinions that they want to put into a posting. If you have something you want to contribute you can always email it to me and I will check out.