Tlisted here are faculty bus routes, baseball diamonds and American soccer fields. Troopers queue for lunch at Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Arby’s retailers. A postbox stamped with the emblem of the US postal service stands outdoors the commissary stocked with American groceries. The signage is all in English and the US greenback is the foreign money in use.
Past the perimeter fence, navy helicopters rise above the airfield and lower throughout the blue sky.
The scene is a slice of latest America, regardless of being greater than 5,000km from the US mainland.
Camp Humphreys, situated within the South Korean metropolis of Pyeongtaek, is the most important American navy base outdoors the US: 1,372 hectares (3,390 acres), almost a thousand buildings and with a inhabitants of roughly 41,000, together with American service members, their households and Korean nationals.
It serves as headquarters for United States Forces Korea (USFK), the clearest bodily expression of the alliance between Washington and Seoul that has underpinned stability on the Korean peninsula for the reason that Korean conflict led to an armistice in 1953.
But the alliance that planted this piece of America in South Korea is now being examined. From commerce tensions to safety ensures, relations beneath President Donald Trump are more and more transactional in a means that has unsettled Seoul, which has lengthy trusted Washington as a guarantor in its defence in opposition to North Korea.
“Reliability and credibility points are worse than they had been earlier than,” says Mason Richey, a professor of worldwide politics at Hankuk College of Overseas Research in Seoul. The alliance retains deep operational ties, he says, however the political floor has grow to be way more fraught.
When Trump introduced earlier this month that he would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany after the nation’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, stated Washington was being “humiliated” by Iran – with the US president additionally threatening reductions elsewhere in Europe – Korean media raised the query of whether or not South Korea can be subsequent, reviving hypothesis that has persevered all through Trump’s presidency.
The defence ministry and presidential workplace moved rapidly to disclaim that any troop discount discussions had been beneath means. Requested about reported changes to troop numbers and property, USFK stated the present 28,500 troops was “a baseline, not a restrict or a ceiling”, and that the command’s focus was on capabilities somewhat than mounted numbers.
However beneath Trump, tensions within the alliance – together with an immigration raid at a Hyundai-LG battery plant in Georgia final yr, and threats to hike tariffs on South Korean items to 25% – have begun to spill out into nationwide safety.
The US reportedly partly restricted intelligence sharing after a South Korean minister publicly recognized a suspected North Korean nuclear website. And in April, fallout from a US-incorporated firm’s information breach stalled talks on the event of nuclear-powered submarines.
Amid these tensions, South Korea is debating how dependent it may possibly stay on American safety.
A bonus ‘no different US ally can replicate’
Behind the suburban veneer of Camp Humphreys is a navy set up coaching for conflict. On the state-of-the-art Vandal Coaching Middle, US and Korean troopers run water-survival drills in a large pool designed to simulate a helicopter crashing into the ocean.
In a darkened medical room full of synthetic smoke and the piped-in sounds of fight, troops carrying night-vision goggles practise battlefield evacuations on $400,000 mannequins with severed limbs which can be rigged to bleed on command. Upstairs, virtual-reality simulators enable models to run fight situations in nearly any nation or terrain on the planet.
An official on the base says the readiness customary is “struggle tonight”.
For years, their focus has been throughout the northern border. North Korea possesses nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles theoretically able to reaching the US mainland. In late 2024 it deployed greater than 12,000 troops to help Russian forces in Ukraine and is extensively believed to have obtained superior navy expertise and coaching from Moscow in return.
However Washington is changing into extra specific about recalibrating the division of labour. The Pentagon’s nationwide defence technique – printed in January – states that South Korea is able to taking “main accountability” for deterring North Korea, with more and more restricted US help.
Washington can also be pushing to broaden its mission past the Korean peninsula.
From Camp Humphreys, the US has China in view. The bottom is positioned roughly 800km (500 miles) from Shanghai and beneath 1,400km from Taiwan.
“Korea sits on the centre of the regional safety geometry, with a positional benefit no different US ally can replicate,” a USFK official informed the Guardian.
Xavier Brunson, the commander of USFK, says the bottom’s presence “complicates each calculation” an adversary makes.
In Seoul, although, there are fears that internet hosting a launchpad for US regional operations past North Korea may drag South Korea into undesirable battle with China.
“Many South Koreans, notably amongst extra progressive constituencies, are reluctant to see USFK reoriented towards containing China,” says Jaechun Kim, a professor of worldwide relations at Sogang College in Seoul.
“There may be sturdy concern about entrapment in broader US-China strategic competitors, notably over potential Taiwan contingencies.”
Trump’s latest requires allies, together with South Korea, to hitch US-led operations within the strait of Hormuz sharpened considerations in Seoul about how far the alliance may lengthen past the peninsula.
At Camp Humphreys, 4 new barracks are nearing completion, and a brand new elementary faculty is beneath building. The bottom goes nowhere, and for now at the least, large-scale troop withdrawals stay unlikely. A sculpture commemorating the US-South Korea alliance stands outdoors the USFK headquarters.
Inscribed on one aspect, in Korean, are the phrases: “함께 갑시다” (hamkke gapsida) – we go collectively.
