November 29, 2023
Opinion

American soldiers need to leave South Korea

Continuing U.S. presence helps Seoul avoid facing reality

It's time for the United States to withdraw its soldiers from Korea. This has nothing to do with “liberating South Korea from U.S. imperialism,” and nothing to do with American retrenchment and isolationism.

On the South Korean left, calls for withdrawal reek of reactionary racism and thinly veiled Korean nationalism. The fascist Korean left and its mendacious apologists still lurk in open sight. Korea experienced actual colonialism under Japanese rule, and whatever the U.S. presence may be, it isn’t that. Even if Korea was once a client state, that changed decades ago.