The Homa Files

Yesterday, I posed the question:

Why are there more U.S. troops on South Korea’s border than on our own border?

Specifically, there are about 200 US soldiers per border mile between North & South Korea, but only  is about 1 agent or soldier for every 10 miles along the US-Mexican border.

A loyal HomaFiles reader provided an thoughtful answer to my question.

Well this one is pretty easy actually: We are defending against a greater economic threat to the U.S. in South Korea than we currently face in most of the area adjacent to the Mexican border. To wit:

1) North Korea has the world’s largest artillery force, some 13,000 pieces of which are deployed at the DMZ

2) The Korean People’s Army (aka the bad guys) has ~1.1 MM soldiers (plus a reserve of 8 MM) with 70% of that active force within 100km of the DMZ

3) Seoul, South Korea is just 50 from the DMZ and produces ~$210 billion in GDP (Hong Kong is ~$225 billion)

4) Any enduring attack on Seoul would create global supply-chain chaos – much of which would disproportionately impact the U.S. and its allies

5) The most effective deterrent known to the world are U.S. men and women in uniform alert, aware, and armed to the teeth

Draw your own conclusion …

This entry was posted on June 29, 2011 at 6:41 am and is filed under Border Security, Immigration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.