The Associated Press reported on the 29th, citing multiple senior U.S. defense officials, that the Donald Trump administration is not ruling out a reduction in the U.S. military presence in South Korea.
According to the AP, two senior defense officials who visited Singapore with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for the Shangri-La Dialogue in Asia said that they are not ruling out a reduction in the number of troops deployed in South Korea as they determine the size of the troop presence needed to best check China in the region.
One official explained that while the number of U.S. troops stationed in South Korea has not been determined yet, the size of the future troop deployment will be optimized not only to defend South Korea from North Korea.
In this regard, a senior US Department of Defense official stated, “Deterrence against China is our priority,” and “It is essential to work with the South Korean government to modernize our alliance and calibrate the USFK posture on the Korean Peninsula to reflect the realities of the security environment in the region.”
These remarks all seem to have come in the context of pursuing “strategic flexibility” that does not limit the scope of USFK activities to the Korean Peninsula but allows them to be deployed to various geopolitical crises in Northeast Asia.
USFK has been stationed to protect South Korea from North Korean threats in accordance with the ROK-US Mutual Defense Treaty, but as the US’s competition for hegemony with China intensified, it has increasingly placed emphasis on expanding strategic flexibility.