Officials in Seoul are also concerned that if China invades Taiwan and the United States uses its forces in South Korea to defend Taiwan, China and North Korea could open another military conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
Similar concerns were behind a 2006 joint statement in which the United States agreed to respect South Korea’s position that “it shall not be involved in a regional conflict in Northeast Asia against the will of the Korean people.” Only then did South Korea agree to respect “the necessity for strategic flexibility” of the U.S. forces in South Korea.
But that was before the United States saw China as its biggest security threat and made defending Taiwan from Chinese aggression a priority. In recent weeks, some policy analysts in Washington have suggested that the U.S. military should drastically reduce its presence in South Korea because it cannot freely use its bases there to fight a war elsewhere.
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