Jon Dunbar is a copy editor at The Korea Times, as well as editor of the Foreign Community page and curator of the Korea Times Archive. If you have suggestions for possible articles, or wish to contribute articles yourself, contact jdunbar@koreatimes.co.kr.
Researcher reveals 'post-American landscapes' in USFK military redeployment
A statue symbolizes the first wave of mixed-race Korean adoptees in Paju Omma Poom Park, opened last September on the former site of a U.S. military base. Korea Times photo by Jon Dunbar
By Jon Dunbar
By Jon Dunbar
It's hard to build a full geographical understanding of the Korean Peninsula, due mainly to divisions caused by the Cold War. This includes not just the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) separating the two Koreas, but also urban military sites across Korea inaccessible to the general public.
But now that a large-scale plan is redeploying U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) troops further south, coinciding with a warming of inter-Korean relations, South Koreans are rediscovering territory that has been off-limits for decades.
Bridget Martin, a Ph.D. candidate from the Department of Geography at UC Berkeley, has been studying the relationship between USFK base consolidation and local development for almost four years.
Bridget Martin
“Perceived threat levels from the North, which can change quickly, do not track onto the long-term project of U.S. base consolidation,” Martin told The Korea Times. “The U.S. had a decades-long objective of consolidating its forces to a southward rear location. But why the U.S. wanted to build a $10 billion mega-base in Pyeongtaek to establish an enduring long-term presence on the peninsula is a separate and much larger question my research doesn't tackle. In any case, the U.S. has been successful at getting South Korea to pay for most of it.”
She began her Ph.D. pilot in 2015 looking at one of Korea's fastest-growing cities, Pyeongtaek in Gyeonggi Province, the site of Camp Humphreys, now America's largest overseas military base. Her interest in the urban growth didn't begin with the military development but she quickly saw how inseparable the two were.
“It was from this starting point that I began investigating the relationship between U.S. bases and local development in other cities and towns as well, from Pyeongtaek to Seoul and cities near the DMZ,” she said.
“Part of what I want to highlight through my research is what localities are dealing with once the U.S. military withdraws.”
Her research has taken her to far-flung sites, such as Omma Poom Park, an isolated park built by the back gate of a former USFK base in Paju northwest of Seoul, which honors the first wave of mixed-race Korean adoptees. She's also
visited Sunshine Land Military Experience Center in Nonsan
, South Chungcheong Province, a camp that exposes children to military games in preparation for their eventual conscription.
“Some advocates of demilitarization might not realize this, but the Ministry of National Defense, and not local governments or local people, owns almost all former U.S. base lands,” she said. “What interests me is how local governments work within these constraints and portray their conversion projects to the wider world. Cities will generally try to attract developers or institutions like universities that can purchase and develop these large-scale former base areas. Some cities have been trying to find developers for over a decade and are left with big swaths of disused lands, even right in the middle of the city. You can see this phenomenon in Uijeongbu, Dongducheon, and Paju.”
However, the Yongsan Relocation Plan, currently underway to redeploy USFK resources from central Seoul to Pyeongtaek, sees the returned Yongsan Garrison land in Seoul handed over to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, rather than the defense ministry, which simplifies the process for the construction of the planned Yongsan Park.
“As it stands, the present plan basically treats the garrison site as a blank slate upon which to create an ecological park,” Martin said. “But… this garrison is home to a rich and complicated social history. I would hope the ministry would re-evaluate the site as a complex and even contradictory space and use participatory planning tools to create a situation in which citizens can grapple with the legacies of Korea's relationship with Japan and the U.S.”
According to her, the idea for handing Yongsan Garrison back to Korea came not from the U.S. or liberal Korean politicians, but from Roh Tae-woo during his presidential campaign in 1987.
“Within the context Seoul's urbanization and partial democratization of the country, Roh made a deal with the US in 1990 to relocate Yongsan Garrison to a location south of the Han River. Similarly to today, the plan was to convert the site into a major urban park. However, the project was continually delayed due to ballooning costs,” she explained.
“The idea was revived and expanded to include more site conversions through negotiations with the US under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations. Seoul wanted Yongsan Garrison to be relocated, while Washington wanted to close many of its scattered bases near the DMZ to save money, to reduce political conflict around bases, and to prepare for increasing South Korean responsibility of defense in the northern part of the country.”
Martin will give a
lecture for the Royal Asiatic Korea Branch (RASKB)
at 7:30 p.m. on Jan. 15 in the second-floor lounge of Somerset Palace in downtown Seoul. All are welcome. Non-members pay 10,000 won and students pay 5,000 won. Visit
for more information.