Korea has always had a tug on my spirit. Maybe it goes back to my fourteen-month assignment in what had, originally, been the steam bath for Japanese Forces assigned to occupy the ancient capital of a unified nation.

We looked at the frontier a couple dozen miles to the North, and the irksome antics of the current occupant of Pyongyang. Ot has There are 28,500 U.S. troops deployed to South Korea as part of the U.S. long-term commitment to help defend Seoul from any attack from North Korea. A relic of how things once stood in my time in Seoul is the significant number of Americans on one-year overseas assignments. In my time if was the Military Coup of General Chon Tu Hwan, and the 2,000 who perished in the Kwangju protests that followed.

I can only find numbers handy from the turn of the century, not during my time in 1980, but the number of us assigned hovering around 30,000, though sometimes being nearly four thousand short of that total. But there is a change in progress in the status of the array of US forces and ships across the Indo-Pacific. It also reflects the deployment of a credible deterrent against China for any potential attack on Taiwan and other acts of aggression. While the amount of resources required is under debate with a huge debt problem.

That would normally be some slight adjustment on current level of force, but there has been no focus on end-strength yet regarding their status. If the American force is subject to restructuring, it might require a more active use of the available personnel to demonstrate new strategies of deterrence, which will require an adept force able to rapidly respond to aggression. Pressures on America show every indication of minimizing external national building, and this is clearly one of them to have more flexibility in The East.

No decision has been made on the number of troops deployed to South Korea this morning, but there challenges coming since any future footprint must be flexible enough to defend against Pyongyang but also to provide deterrence to China.

SECDEF Hegseth is in Singapore for the Shangri-La dialogue. This is one of the most important independent forums for the exchange of views by international security policy decision-makers. It would have been a good opportunity for talks with the ROK Defense chief, but elections in South, tinged with the recent failure of martial law, would have made them uncertain.

Without direct participation by ROK Defence folks, the discussions will be about how the region adapts to an America that may need to alter the alignment of forces.