South Korea: Forever Dependent on America

South Korea: Forever Dependent on America

07/28/14

Doug Bandow

Defense, Military Strategy, South Korea, United States

"Sixty-one years after the end of the Korean War, the ROK still refuses to defend itself."

The Republic of Korea is one of the world’s great success stories. The war-torn former Japanese colony has become a high-tech industrialized nation with one of the world’s largest economies. Years of military dictatorship have given way to robust democracy.

But sixty-one years after the end of the Korean War, the ROK still refuses to defend itself. In fact, its officials appear determined to preserve America’s outdated security guarantee by keeping their nation militarily helpless and dependent.

South Korea’s ambitions are similar to those of any other major power. Its businesses operate around the globe. Its people go abroad as missionaries and tourists. Its diplomats participate in foreign forums. Its military contributes to international peacekeeping operations. And its government is creating armed forces capable of acting overseas, including a “blue water” navy for deployment well beyond the ROK’s own waters. The Park government is even considering constructing two light aircraft carriers in the coming decades.

Yet Seoul doesn’t exercise operational control over its own military in wartime. That authority remains with the United States as it has since the Korean War.

American control originally made sense, since the ROK’s authoritarian government was both feckless and reckless. But economic prosperity arrived in the 1960s. Democracy finally came a quarter century later.

Today, the South enjoys vast advantages over its decrepit antagonist to the north: forty times the economic strength, twice the population, a vast technological lead, easy access to international markets and almost unanimous diplomatic support. The so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea can’t even count on its traditional ally, China, in a military showdown on the peninsula.

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