Notion of U.S. Troop Cuts Unnerves South Korea and Japan

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“For South Korea, living with a nuclear-armed North Korea is much better than living without American troops,” said Shin Won-sik, a retired three-star South Korean general. “If they are gone, we will lose proof that the Americans will defend us. We will lose confidence that if war breaks out, we can win.”

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President Trump visiting American and Korean service members at Camp Humphreys, in South Korea, in November. Mr. Trump has openly questioned the merit of maintaining a costly military presence overseas.

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Doug Mills/The New York Times

In Seoul, President Moon Jae-in moved quickly Friday to calm jitters, especially among older conservatives, who consider the American military presence a sacrosanct symbol of national security and are deeply skeptical of Mr. Kim’s intentions. Mr. Moon’s office said news that the White House was considering drawing down troops was “not true at all.”

“The Moon government doesn’t want the focus of public attention to move from the denuclearization of North Korea to the withdrawal of U.S. troops yet, which is such a political hot potato,” said Lee Byong-chul, senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul. “But if a peace treaty is signed, the U.S. troops are bound to peter out. Much of the reason they are staying here will be gone.”

Conservatives in South Korea bristle at such a possibility, arguing that a withdrawal would expose their country to potential foes far stronger than North Korea, like China and Japan, which have invaded numerous times over the centuries. South Koreans reacted to Washington’s past attempts to pull out troops with calls for arming the country with nuclear weapons of its own.

Although South Korea’s navy and air force are superior to the North’s, North Korea has a much bigger army, including stockpiles of chemical and nuclear weapons and huge batteries of artillery, rockets and missiles that could hit Seoul, a city of 10 million people.

For decades, the American military has protected South Korea and Japan under its nuclear umbrella, and it shares high-tech military surveillance and conducts annual joint war games preparing for any conflict.

For many in the region, giving up that protection is an unsettling prospect, even if peace comes to the peninsula.

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“The reason foreign investors stay in South Korea, and its stock market doesn’t panic even when China’s military prowess grows and North Korea conducts its nuclear weapons, is because of the U.S. military presence here,” said Mr. Shin, who served as the South Korean military’s top operational strategist before he retired in 2015. “If they shake the alliance for the sake of denuclearizing North Korea, we will have an economic crisis before a security crisis.”

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Supporters of Mr. Trump in Seoul last year. For conservative South Koreans, the American military presence is a sacrosanct symbol of national security.

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Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Trump’s reported directive came as Seoul and Washington were negotiating to decide how much more South Korea should pay than the $800 million a year it is currently paying for the 28,500 United States troops here. Mr. Trump wants a bigger burden-sharing from Seoul, which has resisted.

Trump administration officials say a full troop withdrawal is unlikely. They say that rethinking the force’s size and configuration was overdue, and that they want to see if a smaller force can provide adequate security.

The fate of the American troops has become one of the most delicate points of discussion as the two Koreas, the United States and China engage in fast-paced diplomacy over how to end the North’s nuclear weapons program.

South Korean officials say that North Korea is not insisting on a pullout of American troops during the latest round of negotiations with Seoul and Washington. They say that they want the troops to stay as a regional stabilizer even if a peace treaty is signed.

In past negotiations, North Korean officials told their South Korean and American counterparts that they could support the United States military presence in South Korea if Washington and Pyongyang normalized ties and the troops served a “peacekeeping role” to prevent China from becoming a dominant military power in the region.

A troop withdrawal could send a bad signal to Japan, where about 50,000 American military service members are based, analysts said.

“Across the waters in Japan, I think it’s going to be read very, very poorly and really make the Japanese anxious about what exactly are the U.S. commitments” in the region, said Jeffrey Hornung, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation.

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A welcoming ceremony for Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in Seoul in October. The fate of American troops in South Korea has become one of the most delicate points of discussions as the two Koreas, the United States and China engage in fast-paced diplomacy over how to end the North’s nuclear weapons program.

Credit
Jung Yeon-Je/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Japan has stepped up its own show of military force, and Mr. Abe has sought to revise the pacifist clause in the country’s Constitution. On Thursday, he released a video message calling for amending it to make explicit the legality of the country’s Self-Defense Forces, as Japan’s military, which has about 225,000 active members, is known.

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On Friday Mr. Abe’s office called American forces “essential” for the security of the region.

If Mr. Trump were to succeed in pulling troops from the Korean Peninsula, it could embolden Mr. Abe to push through a constitutional change while citing the reduced American military presence in the region.

The Japanese public has long opposed any constitutional change and on Thursday, thousands of people protested the idea in Tokyo. But recent polls show opinion is increasingly divided.

Ichiro Fujisaki, a former Japanese ambassador to Washington, struck a moderate tone.

He said that “the U.S. presence is more symbolic than really there to fight against North Korea,” given the strength of the South Korean military and the fact that North Korea’s missiles are a bigger threat than an actual invasion.

Mr. Fujisaki added that as long as the Trump administration consulted the Japanese and South Korean governments about its plans, “it’s not that big a concern.”

China has long wanted American troops to leave South Korea, and analysts there said a drawdown — or complete withdrawal — could drastically reshape the balance of power in the region.

“The end of American troops in South Korea may indicate the beginning of the dissolution of the U.S. alliance in the Asia-Pacific,” said Cheng Xiaohe, a professor of international relations at Renmin University in Beijing. “If the American alliance system was gone, China would be greatly relieved.”

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