Christian ties may bind US troops to South Korea

[donsu]

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/GD08Dg01.html


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Hallelujah, many would argue. Advisers in the US State Department and Department of Defense have been questioning the utility of permanently posting 37,000 troops and their equipment to the peninsula, at a cost of about US$3 billion a year, for more than decade. Longtime observers, such as Doug Bandow of the Cato Institute, have been calling for a review of forces in South Korea with a view not only to rearranging troops and personnel, currently under way with base consolidations south of Seoul and the planned withdrawal of 12,500 troops, but also initiating what many believe should have been started more than a decade ago - the complete withdrawal of all US forces on the peninsula.

So with Roh and his senior cabinet members giving signals that the foreign policies of the US and South Korea have become irreversibly divergent (in reality, South Korean foreign policy pretty well begins and ends with North Korea), why are the Americans still there? Why isn't there a real push for complete withdrawal?

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So why the inertia in moving troops out when South Korea's leaders seem to opening the exit door wide? The thickest knot to cut may be the US-South Korean Christian alliance.

While Korean political leaders are definitely "Rohing" in a different direction, there remain enduring ties between the US and South Korea's ubiquitous Christian groups, including the 700,000-member Yoido Full Gospel (YFG) in southern Seoul. In sharp contrast to most other segments of Korean society, YFG and other churches have organized "pro-America" rallies, events that mostly elderly parishioners take to the heart of downtown, waving US flags in oddly staged demonstrations of pro-Americanism.
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so, how much money is the bushgang giving YFG?

read on about Sens. Brownback and Bayh - oh yes

the article ends with this:

With the Cold War over, South Korea may again be on the front lines of another war - a new front line in Christendom's regional struggle - this time on the Korean Peninsula.