S Korea: US forces to stay regardless of potential peace treaty with North

South Korea’s presidential office says the United States military presence in the Asian country will continue and would be unrelated to any peace treaty with the North, after an adviser suggested otherwise in a newspaper column.

“US troops stationed in South Korea are an issue regarding the alliance between South Korea and the United States. It has nothing to do with signing peace treaties,” said a spokesman for the presidential Blue House, Kim Eui-kyeom, on Wednesday, citing President Moon Jae-in.

The statement emphasized that the nearly 28,500 American forces in South Korea should remain there even if a peace accord is signed with North Korea.

The statement came in response to inquiries by local media outlets regarding a column written by presidential adviser and academic Moon Chung-in. Published earlier in the week, it said the continued presence of the huge US military contingent in South Korea would be difficult to justify in case a peace treaty was signed with the North.

At the end of a war in the early 1950s, the two Koreas signed an armistice agreement but not a peace treaty. A recent rapprochement, which culminated in a historic summit between the leaders of the two countries, has strengthened the possibility of a peace treaty finally being signed.

Kim, the spokesman, called on the presidential adviser not to generate confusion regarding President Moon Jae-in’s position on the peace treaty with Pyongyang.

Another presidential official, who anonymously spoke to Reuters on Wednesday, also said Seoul wanted the American troops to remain in South Korea since they played “the role of a mediator in military confrontations between neighboring superpowers like China and Japan.”

US military forces have been stationed in South Korea since the end of the Korean War in 1953. North Korea had long conditioned the abandonment of its weapons programs on the departure of US forces from the region.

But since the inter-Korean détente began in January, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has appeared unusually accommodating toward South Korea. His meeting with President Moon, during which Kim joked self-deprecatingly, worked to strengthen that image. Earlier, Kim also secretly met with the then-CIA chief and now-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Pyongyang.

Kim has even said he would suspend North Korea’s weapons programs and shut down one nuclear site as a sign of goodwill. He has not publicly demanded the withdrawal from the region of the American forces.

It is unclear, however, what a future peace treaty between the two Koreas would look like — or if one would be reached at all.

During their meeting, Kim and Moon seemed upbeat on the matter, however, agreeing that there was a mutual will to put an end to the Korean conflict and vowing that there would be “no more wars” on the Korean Peninsula.

US F-22 warplanes in South Korea for new drills

Meanwhile, American F-22 stealth fighters have arrived in South Korea ahead of joint drills.

Seoul confirmed the arrival of the US warplanes on Wednesday following reports by local media outlets indicating that eight F-22 ‘Raptor’ jets had arrived on Sunday at a South Korean military airbase in the southern city of Gwangju.

The war games, dubbed “Max Thunder,” are due to begin on May 11 for a two-week period, with the reported participation of nearly 100 aircraft from both countries.

“Max Thunder is a regular exercise that has been on the docket long before a planned US-North Korea summit,” said the South Korean Defense Ministry in a statement.

Earlier, news media outlets had suggested that the aircraft deployment was intended to mount pressure on Pyongyang ahead of a planned summit between Kim and US President Donald Trump.