Trump talk of cutting US forces in Korea has rocky precedent
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has alarmed U.S. allies in Asia and elsewhere by suggesting that American military support should depend on their willingness to pay.
A senior North Korean diplomat warned in an Associated Press interview last week of a vicious showdown if the U.S. and South Korea hold annual war games as planned this month.
Pyongyang is seething after Washington slapped sanctions on its leader, Kim Jong Un, over human rights abuses.
The U.S. forces in South Korea are a legacy of the 1950-53 Korean War that ended without a formal peace treaty.
North Korea expert Bob Carlin, who was CIA analyst at the time, recalled a South Korean army colonel taking him in November 1976 to a tunnel that had been dug by North Korea under the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, between the two Koreas.
The killer blow to Carter's plan was a U.S. intelligence report in 1978 that North Korea had 40 percent more ground forces than earlier thought, and a two-to-one advantage over South Korea in tanks and artillery.
Ultimately, Carter backed down on troop withdrawals after Park committed to increase South Korean defense spending and release 180 political prisoners.