[A-List] US imperialism: Korea

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

US troops to quit Korean border zone

Jonathan Watts in Tokyo
Friday June 6, 2003
The Guardian

For the first time since the Korean war the United States is to withdraw its
troops from the border between North and South, a redeployment which raises
the prospect of a US strike on Pyongyang's nuclear facilities.

The retreat from the 38th parallel - once described by Bill Clinton as "the
scariest place on earth" - will take US soldiers out of the range of North
Korean artillery.

Under a plan announced in Seoul yesterday the 15,000 personnel of the Second
Infantry Division will relinquish their frontline defensive role in two
stages over the next few years.

The division - current motto: "In Front of Them All" - has stood eyeball to
eyeball with North Korean troops in the demilitarised zone since the end of
the 1950-53 Korean war, which killed 3 million people.

As well as supporting South Korean troops, who will continue to guard the
border, the division has acted as the symbolic "tripwire" for American
intervention in the event of an attack from the North.

But its presence within a couple of miles of North Korea's million-strong
army has also served to deter the US from intervening militarily in the
North.

In 1994 the White House rejected a Pentagon plan to launch an air attack on
Pyongyang's nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, because of the vulnerability of
American troops on the border and the millions of civilians in nearby Seoul.

Once those troops have been removed, the US will be in a stronger position
to use its vastly superior long-range weapons.

During a visit to Seoul by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz,
this week, American officials said the redeployment would allow the US to
start "taking down" North Korean troops within an hour of a conflict
beginning, and to launch counter-strikes at Pyongyang.