A View From South Korea

By Oh Young-jin

August 16, 2019 "Information Clearing House" -   U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) is under attack not by enemy but by its own commander-in-chief, President Donald Trump.

Trump is prioritizing the size of the bill host Korea pays toward upkeep and is indulging himself in an unwarranted bromance with the head of the enemy.

The risk is bringing confusion to the mission and raison d'etre of the peacekeepers and freedom fighters who have stood ready for decades to throw down their lives to help protect Koreans from North Korean invasions and assert a U.S.-led balance of power in the region where interests of big powers often clash. So a blow to the USFK credibility is feared.

Already, Trump's first defense secretary, James Mattis, the soldier of the soldiers, called it quits over Trump's acts of belittling the allies, calling them freeloaders being piggybacked by the U.S., and his boss's readiness to sleep with enemies like the North's young dictator Kim Jong-un and Russia's Vladimir Putin.

With Mattis out, there has been no stopping Trump, who has become even more eager to get his message as "transactional" promoter of American interests across the voters for his re-election in the November 2020 vote.

As hosts, Koreans are getting tired of his incessant demand for more money despite their appreciation of a key role played by U.S. troops here to keep the North at bay. But some of them openly questioned whether Trump is relegating USFK to the level of hired guns or a bunch of soldiers of fortune.