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OPINION:
John R. Bolton, President Trump’s onetime national security adviser, thinks he knows why the commander in chief has suggested that South Korea donate America’s largest overseas base to the U.S. government. Mr. Trump, after all, “is a real estate developer,” as Mr. Bolton noted sardonically in an online forum.
What could be more tempting for future development than Camp Humphreys, which occupies 3,538 acres of prime real estate 40 miles south of Seoul, within easy commuting range of the South Korean capital by frequent express trains?
Mr. Bolton, one of Mr. Trump’s fiercest critics, mingled his theory on Mr. Trump’s designs on Camp Humphreys with trenchant criticism of the president’s “incoherent” policies on Ukraine and speculation as to why FBI Director Kash Patel ordered a “suspicious” raid on Mr. Bolton’s Bethesda, Maryland, home. Implicit in Mr. Trump’s cavalier suggestion that South Korea surrender the base to the U.S. is that Seoul has as much to fear from Mr. Trump’s unpredictable words and deeds as do other regions caught up in conflicts to which he offers no real solutions (other than pleas for peace that strong-willed leaders such as Russian ruler Vladimir Putin can ignore).
Mr. Trump gave every appearance of getting along just fine with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung at his White House summit in August. He promised to promote a joint session with North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, with whom Mr. Trump professed to have “fallen in love” at their first summit in Singapore in June 2018.
In the end, however, Messrs. Trump and Lee came up with no agreements, deals or guarantees of South Korea’s security against a North Korean regime fortified by a much-strengthened alliance with Russia. Neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Lee had a word to say about Mr. Kim’s dispatching thousands of troops and millions of artillery shells for Mr. Putin’s war in Ukraine.
Mr. Kim has let it be known, via his loquacious younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, that his relationship with Mr. Trump is “not bad.” Still, he scorns Mr. Lee and denigrates South Korea as the “enemy,” beholden as ever to the U.S. Mr. Trump plays up his own relationship with Mr. Kim — with whom he got nowhere in two more meetings, one in Hanoi in February 2019 and four months later at the truce village of Panmunjom — and shocked Koreans with the notion of acquiring ownership of Camp Humphreys.
The inference was that the base could become a pawn in getting South Korea to pay far more than the $1.1 billion annually that was negotiated during the Biden administration for U.S. defense and ultimately be sold to greedy real estate investors if Mr. Trump decides to leave the South to face the North on its own, as he hinted at during his first term.
Mr. Trump’s suggestion cast doubt on the future of a military alliance for which Camp Humphreys provides the headquarters for U.S. Forces Korea and the Combined Forces Command of Korean and American troops. All told, about 45,000 people live on the base, including a majority of the 28,500 U.S. troops in Korea, along with family members and civilian workers. Shopping at a modern mall and living in comfortable apartments, Americans can enjoy the lifestyle of a little America and forget they are smack in the middle of a densely populated region that’s a potential target for North Korean missiles.
Mr. Trump is thinking, “What can we do there?” said Mr. Bolton, meditating on why the president had raised the topic of South Korea’s simply handing over the base, which Mr. Trump claims the Americans are leasing from Seoul. No doubt, Mr. Bolton said, he is also thinking of the value of the previous American headquarters in the Yongsan district of Seoul. After the Americans left, South Korean tycoons scrambled for land not marked as a vast urban park. “Some real estate developers made a lot of money off of it,” Mr. Bolton told the forum staged by the Institute for Corean-American Studies in Philadelphia. (“Corea” is a historic spelling of Korea.)
Caught off balance by Mr. Trump’s mention of the base, Koreans scrambled to explain why Mr. Trump’s lust for Camp Humphreys is as zany as his notions for taking over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal Zone. Mr. Lee’s national security adviser, Wi Sung-lac, promised to explore what Mr. Trump really had in mind but argued that the Americans do not have a lease on the base. Rather, he said, they are the beneficiaries of a Korean government “grant” that will expire “when facilities are no longer needed.”
At Camp Humphreys, those facilities include all the luxuries of an upscale American community. “We have opened new gyms, one with an indoor swimming pool, many new barracks and dining facilities, and four schools (two elementary, one middle and a high school),” reads an official brochure welcoming incoming soldiers and family members. “Those facilities complement other great places, like our outdoor swimming pool, library, guest lodge, and education center.”
Mr. Trump’s talk of acquiring the base, gratis, from South Korea inevitably raises concerns that he might follow the advice of those who suggest leaving South Korea for the Koreans to defend. “I just hope that the isolationists in the administration do not convince Trump that we don’t need troops on the Korean Peninsula or Japan,” Mr. Bolton said.
Camp Humphreys is at the nexus of American defense in a region in which Mr. Trump, meeting with Mr. Lee, evinced no real interest beyond another fruitless summit with Kim Jong-un and the possible acquisition of a great piece of real estate.
• Donald Kirk is a former Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the old Washington Star.
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