South Korea hosts America's biggest overseas military base but what does its future look like under Trump?

Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, is the largest American military base outside the US, covering 1,372 hectares and housing nearly 41,000 people across about a thousand buildings. The base includes everyday American infrastructure such as school bus routes, sports fields, English signage, US currency, and US postal services, with American families and Korean nationals living alongside service members. It functions as headquarters for United States Forces Korea and symbolizes the alliance between Washington and Seoul that has supported stability since the 1953 armistice. Relations are now being tested as US policy under President Donald Trump becomes more transactional, raising concerns in Seoul about reliability and credibility of security guarantees against North Korea.

"Camp Humphreys, located in the South Korean city of Pyeongtaek, is the largest American military base outside the US: 1,372 hectares (3,390 acres), nearly a thousand buildings and with a population of roughly 41,000, including American service members, their families and Korean nationals. It serves as headquarters for United States Forces Korea (USFK), the clearest physical expression of the alliance between Washington and Seoul that has underpinned stability on the Korean peninsula since the Korean war ended in an armistice in 1953."

"There are school bus routes, baseball diamonds and American football fields. Soldiers queue for lunch at Taco Bell, Pizza Hut and Arby's outlets. A postbox stamped with the logo of the US postal service stands outside the commissary stocked with American groceries. The signage is all in English and the US dollar is the currency in use. Beyond the perimeter fence, military helicopters rise above the airfield and cut across the blue sky."

"Yet the alliance that planted this piece of America in South Korea is now being tested. From trade tensions to security guarantees, relations under President Donald Trump are increasingly transactional in a way that has unsettled Seoul, which has long depended on Washington as a guarantor in its defence against North Korea. Reliability and credibility issues are worse than they were before, says Mason Richey, a professor of international politics at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul."

"The alliance retains deep operational ties, he says, but the political surface has become far more fraught. When Trump announced earlier this month that he would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany after the country's chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said Washington was being humil"

Read at www.theguardian.com