ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1995, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 10, 1995 TAG: 9512080030
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: F-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: TOKYO
SOURCE: NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF THE NEW YORK TIMES
Half a century after U.S. troops waded ashore on Japan and liberated Korea, a growing number of people are suggesting that it is time they left.
There appears to be the beginning of a broad debate about whether the United States still needs nearly 100,000 troops based in Japan and South Korea.
It is not that college students are marching about chanting "Yankee imperialists go home," as they did in the 1960s. Rather, people are simply asking aloud who the enemy is in the post-Cold-War world. And they are chafing at the crimes by American soldiers, the cost of their presence, even the noise of the fighter jets zooming overhead.
Some Japanese, Koreans and Americans alike worry that a far-reaching dynamic is under way that may lead to a dramatic reduction in the U.S. troop presence in Asia. They fear that this would be a disaster for the region, setting off an arms race and major new wars that might ultimately involve the United States.
The starting point for a growing number of Japanese and South Koreans is that in security relations the United States has too good a deal.
"We've been yes-men, a yes-country," said Lee Chul, a member of the opposition in the National Assembly in South Korea. "It's about time that the U.S. listened to the voices of the South Korean government and the South Korean people."
In Japan, the irritations were evident in a recent magazine headline that said the rape of an Okinawa schoolgirl, in which three American servicemen were charged, proved "Japan Is Still a Colony." The magazine added that "in the face of such humiliation" Japan should not increase its payments for the U.S. troop presence.
American critics of the bases agree that security relations are unfair, but in a different way. They protest that it is unjust that the United States not only provides troops who risk their lives for Japan and South Korea, but also pays tens of billions of dollars for the privilege.
To be sure, most Japanese, South Korean and U.S. officials alike want to keep a presence by U.S. troops. The United States now has 37,000 troops in South Korea and nearly 47,000 in Japan, plus 13,000 sailors whose home port is in Japan.
"The importance to East Asia, to the Asia-Pacific region, and to the entire world of a continued U.S. presence here, and the continuation of the strong security relationship between the United States and Japan, can scarcely be overstated," Vice President Al Gore said during a visit to Japan last month.
Yet a growing self-confidence and nationalism in Asia are leading to demands that the United States adjust its presence in ways that it may find difficult to accept.
Some South Koreans are demanding that U.S. military personnel pay Korean taxes. Americans, however, have trouble understanding why they should send their soldiers to Korea, pay most of the bill and then pay again in the form of taxes.
In the back of everyone's mind is the memory of what happened in the Philippines a few years ago.
The United States wanted to keep Subic Naval Base and Clark Air Field. But negotiations between the United States and the Philippines broke into bickering over minor matters, and rising nationalism led to a vote in the Philippines' Senate to evict the American bases. So in 1992, the United States closed Subic and Clark.
Very few people expect that to happen in Japan or South Korea, but many will not rule out the possibility either.
"There is a trend, both within Japan and in the United States, with the end of the Cold War, with budget cutbacks, with a younger generation of Americans and Japanese, that the necessity of having 47,000 troops stationed in Japan is seeming less and less viable in both countries," said Glen Fukushima, a former U.S. trade official who is now a business executive in Tokyo.
Fukushima said that the most likely scenario is that public support will decline but that elites in both countries will continue to support the Japanese-American security alliance and that most American troops will remain in Japan.
Concerns about criticism of the U.S. bases was one of the reasons that President Clinton planned a state visit to Japan - now postponed until sometime next year - to reaffirm the security relationship.
Japanese and South Korean leaders have been reluctant to come out in the same way and build support for U.S. bases, perhaps because they do not want to be seen as on the wrong side of a delicate nationalistic issue. As a result, the perception among ordinary Japanese and South Koreans is that it is really the United States that is pushing for the military presence.
"Japanese leaders have not really explained things to the people," said Yukio Okamoto, a former diplomat who runs a consulting firm in Tokyo. He noted that Clinton had urged support for the security alliance in a television interview broadcast to Japan last week , and he added, referring to Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, "President Clinton was doing the job that Murayama should have been doing, and that's a shame."
A recent poll in the Sankei Shimbun, a Japanese newspaper, found that only 5 percent of those surveyed believed that the U.S. bases are primarily for Japan's benefit. About 46 percent said they are in Japan primarily for the benefit of the United States. Most of the rest say the bases benefit both countries.
The irritation at the U.S. bases is not ideological as it was in the 1960s, when university students dabbled in Marxism and waved their fists at American troops and their involvement in the Vietnam War. Now the opposition is less deep, but polls suggest it is broader.
The Sankei Shimbun poll suggested that 44 percent of Japanese favored the withdrawal of American troops. Only 31 percent favored a continued American military presence.
A poll by another newspaper, the Asahi Shimbun, found that 76 percent of Japanese believe that American bases on the island of Okinawa should be reduced gradually.
When the Liberal Democratic Party, Japan's largest party, was choosing a leader in September, one of the two candidates even said in a television debate that American bases were no longer essential. That candidate, Junichiro Koizumi, said the problem was that the United States was asking Japan to pay more of the costs of maintaining the troops.
"Japan has been paying as much as it can," Koizumi said. "If the United States cannot bear the stationing costs of the U.S. forces in Japan, then we will have to ask them to reduce military personnel and bases."
Koizumi lost the race, but the winner - Ryutaro Hashimoto, the trade minister and a strong contender to become the next prime minister - also has a reputation as a nationalistic and assertive leader. Hashimoto has endorsed the American troop presence, but not in ringing terms.
In both South Korea and Japan, part of the yearning for change is the result of a generational shift and a desire for greater national dignity.
"The Korean War generation is dying out, and 70 percent of Koreans were born after the war," said Lee Young Duk, an editor at Chosun Ilbo, a major Seoul newspaper. "We have a more stable economy as well, and so we're talking about matters of pride. There are more voices calling for an increasingly equal relationship with America."
Shin Myung Soon, a professor of political science at Yonsei University in Seoul, said: "Koreans are beginning to think that we can do what we want. People don't see North Korea as such a lethal threat, so they don't feel so dependent on the U.S. presence."
The demands for adjusting the U.S. military presence take many forms. There are periodic calls to move American bases out of populated areas - one base is in Seoul, and Naha, the Okinawa capital, is an American military port.
In addition, South Koreans and Japanese complain about crimes by U.S. military personnel. The latest outcry in Japan against the bases was set off by the rape of a 12-year-old girl, in which three American servicemen are charged.
All three servicemen have pleaded guilty to conspiracy to abduct and rape the girl, although only one has admitted to forcibly having sex with her.
Many Japanese and Koreans demand that Americans suspected of crimes be handed over immediately to face local justice. But to Americans, local justice sometimes seems like an oxymoron.
There are no jury trials in either Japan or South Korea, and police interrogators are often accused of using harsh interrogation methods to induce confessions. Nonetheless, the United States agreed recently to consider handing over troops suspected of rape or murder in Japan, and a similar agreement - with some procedural protections for Americans - is being negotiated in South Korea.
At present, U.S. military personnel are handed over to local authorities in Japan upon indictment of a crime and in South Korean upon conviction.
Some South Koreans complain that U.S. military personnel can import duty-free household goods, and that the U.S. military does not pay rent for the land it uses. But any changes in these policies would add to the American cost of keeping soldiers in South Korea.
By official calculations the United States already pays 88 percent of the costs of the American presence in Korea. As for Japan, Tokyo claims to pay 70 percent of the costs of the U.S. forces in Japan, but that calculation excludes the troops' salaries; when salaries are included, Japan's share drops to half.
The Pentagon justifies the bases in Japan by saying it is cheaper to base troops here than to keep them in the United States. But much depends on how the figures are calculated, and the Cato Institute in Washington figures that the United States pays vast amounts - about $40 billion a year - to keep troops in Asia.
Americans sometimes complain that Japan is cutting its own armed forces at the same time that it is asking the United States to keep troops in the region. Just a few days ago, the Japanese Cabinet approved a far-reaching plan calling for a 20 percent cut in the ceiling of troops in the Japanese military.
Congress has supported the cost of maintaining 100,000 American troops in the region. But there are some rumblings of discontent from the United States, based in part on the expense involved.
"The existing U.S.-Japanese security relationship is simply not sustainable in the long term," declares a report issued last month by the Cato Institute.
In the United States, a recent poll found that 7 percent of those surveyed favored an immediate withdrawal from American bases in Japan, while another 49 percent supported a gradual withdrawal.
Yet the Pentagon and almost all countries in Asia fervently want the American bases to remain. One danger of an American pullout they cite is that North Korea or China might become militarily adventurous - an invasion by China of Taiwan, for example, would send shock waves through all of Asia.
Walter Mondale, the U.S. ambassador in Tokyo, was anything but hawkish as a politician. But now he argues vigorously for maintaining American bases in Asia.
"Asia does not have a NATO-type security alliance, and none seems to be possible for some time," Mondale said. "So the real basis for stability in this crucial and historically unstable region is the U.S.-Japan alliance, which provides for the defense of Japan and permits us to forward deploy our forces."
Mondale says the bases are so widely viewed as essential that ways will be found to maintain them. He sees little chance of a scenario like the one that unfolded in the Philippines, leading to a major cutback.
The other argument often made for the bases is that they not only protect Japan, but also protect against Japan. The idea is that if the United States withdrew its troops, Japan would rearm and perhaps even acquire nuclear weapons.
This would horrify almost everybody in Asia. The former Singapore leader, Lee Kuan Yew, expressed this concern when he warned that allowing Japan to send troops abroad would be "like giving a chocolate liqueur to an alcoholic."
LENGTH: Long : 209 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: AP. These American GIs were on patrol just a few milesby CNBsouth of the Korean DMZ when this photo was taken in 1980; the
United States still has 37,000 troops in South Korea. Graphic:
Kanner.