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Backgrounder: The Fragile U.S.-South Korea Alliance

Council on Foreign Relations

Author: Carin Zissis, Staff Writer
September 14, 2006

Introduction

The longstanding U.S.-South Korea alliance, more than five decades old, has gone through a difficult period as of late. Among the many issues bedeviling this once solid relationship: disagreement over how to handle Pyongyang following this summer’s missile tests, a generational divide in opinion on the alliance and the U.S. military presence which underpins it, an ascendant China, and the limited progress toward a bilateral trade accord. Experts say friction in the U.S.-South Korean relationship is hardly new, but the alliance has managed to endure.

What is the history of U.S.-South Korea relations?

When Japan lost control of Korea at the end of World War II, the United States and the Soviet Union split the peninsula into two territories pending promised national elections, which never took place. Instead, after Moscow and Washington failed to agree on a way forward, the United Nations in 1948 declared the Republic of Korea (ROK), with its capital in Seoul, as the only legitimate government on the peninsula. The Soviets rejected that assertion, and in 1950, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) invaded. The United States, at the head of UN forces, came to the aid of South Korea and a struggle ensued until 1953, when a cease-fire froze the front line at roughly the thirty-eighth parallel.

In 1954, the United States and South Korea signed the ROK/U.S. Mutual Security Agreement, in which they agreed to defend each other in the event of outside aggression. In 1978, the two countries formed the Combined Forces Command (CFC), based in Seoul and with a U.S.general at the helm, to defend South Korea.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2006 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.