Koreans cautious about U.S. strategic flexibility

To many Koreans strategic flexibility doesn’t mean mobility, it means vulnerability.

Washington under Biden, and now under Trump, are placing increased emphasis on “strategic flexibility” - the ability to deploy U.S. forces based in Korea to respond to regional or global contingencies.

Many Koreans are deeply uneasy about what this means for their country’s future. To them, strategic flexibility doesn’t just mean mobility. It means vulnerability.

Strategic flexibility raises the fear that the next great-power war might once again be fought on Korean soil.

At the heart of this concern is a deep historical awareness. Korea has repeatedly been the site of major conflicts between foreign powers - wars which Koreans neither started nor controlled, but which devastated their land and people more than any of the foreign actors involved.

The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), and the Korean War (1950–1953) were all launched by imperial powers vying for influence over Korea, but in each case, it was Koreans who bore the brunt of the destructi…