Is South Korea Considering a Partial Withdrawal from Iraq?

So far, it floats like a trial balloon:

A ruling Uri Party MP [Rep. Kim Sung-Gon] said he believes it is possible to bring about 1,000 troops home from Iraq as other countries are also considering downsizing their troop presence.

“It is unavoidable to reduce the number of troops, considering the worsening public sentiment about the troop dispatch and the fact that other coalition nations, such as the United States and Britain, are also pushing for withdrawing or reducing troops,” said Kim Sung-Gon, a member of the parliamentary national defence committee.

The Defense Ministry is playing dumb:

“We haven’t had any talks with the ruling party about the troops reduction issue. Any troop withdrawal plan will be implemented through a close consultation between the relevant government ministries and the ruling party,” Col. Won Tae-je, spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), told The Korea Times.

The bulk of those to be cut are combat troops, for whom the demand has been lower, Rep. Kim claims. Obviously, then, Iraq has solved its security problems. In fact, that statement can only be made without sarcasm in the very area where Korea chose to station its troops–a safe Kurdish area near Irbil.

Indeed, the Korean deployment was mostly cosmetic and created a fiction that was convenient for both nations. Korea got to pretend that there was some mutuality in the Mutual Defense Pact, and later tried to leverage the deployment into U.S. concessions on North Korea. The Bush Administration was able to cite the large, but militarily meaningless, deployment as evidence that it was supported by a broad international coalition, of which South Korea was nominally one of the largest contributors. An early Korean exit would dispense with both fictions. Everyone loses as a result: the U.S. and South Korea for the reasons stated, and North Korea and China because South Korea would lose influence over the United States–influence that at least sought to move the United States toward the positions of both.

The biggest losers would be the Iraqi people, who lose the benefit of any aid and added confidence the Korean presence provided.