'U.S. Out of Korea'

Photo by Elliot Adams (VFP Korea Peace Team) outside U.S. Army base Camp Humphreys. Thirty buses full of police are lined up on the far left of the photo. August 13, 2026

Currently in South Korea national protest actions are being held at U.S. bases around the country as part of 'U.S. Out of Korea' campaign being organized by a vast coalition of peace groups. 

The numbers vary but it is believed that between 48,000-60,000 US military personnel and their families now live on Camp Humphreys. (When regular war games are held the numbers rise.) This would make Camp Humphreys the largest U.S. base outside of the continental United States.

Much of the base expansion was due to the closing of the Yongsan U.S. Army base in downtown Seoul. That base had become a toxic mess and since closing it is still partially unavailable for new usage due to the U.S. essentially refusing to clean-up the damages. They have left it to the ROK (Republic of Korea) government to deal with. That is after the U.S. forced the South Korean government to pay about 90% of the costs to relocate Yongsan to Camp Humphreys.

Of course one reason for the move was the toxic mess at Yongsan. But other reasons I have heard was to move the base about 90 minutes to the south thus making it more difficult for North Korea to hit the base in any war. Plus the ROK government didn't like having Seoul as a prime target.

In 2015 I had the honor to participate in some of these events and below is a report I posted on this blog on August 12, 2015. 

Bruce

We were taken to U.S.’s Osan Air Force Base in Pyeongtaek for a guided tour by a prominent local activist.  We were driven around the perimeter of the bulging base that is now adding a second runway – likely as a result of Obama’s ‘pivot’ of Pentagon forces into the Asia-Pacific to encircle China.  (More airfields are needed for Pentagon warplanes.) In order to make the base expansion possible the U.S. has forced the South Korean government to take even more lands from local farmers. Local citizens and their supporters resisted this land grab by waging a long fierce campaign but their villages and rice fields were eventually stolen.

Osan AFB currently has F-16 and A-10 warplanes stationed there as well as the high-flying U-2 spy planes.  In addition the air base hosts PAC-3 (Patriot third generation) missile defense systems that are aimed at China.  Their job is to take out the retaliatory response following a U.S. first-strike attack against Chinese nuclear forces. (The U.S. has also recently created a Space Force unit at Osan AFB.)

The tour continued to the nearby US Army base called Camp Humphreys that is also undergoing major expansion.  Similar to Osan AFB, the U.S. forced the grabbing of two rice-farming villages near the Army base to provide additional lands for the base expansion. These new facilities at Camp Humphreys will allow the U.S. to move its current base inside downtown Seoul southward making it more difficult for North Korea to retaliate against the U.S. bases following a Pentagon attack on the north.

We had dinner with one rice farmer who lost his land when his village was taken. He and others moved to another nearby location but they couldn't replace their rice farms in the local area. The farmer, now the mayor of his current small village, had to buy new rice land two hours away and must make that long drive back and forth to work in his rice fields. I was told he spent time in prison for “obstructing” the expansion of the Army base during their protest campaign.

The Pentagon currently has in South Korea about 70 bases and military facilities.  In order to pay for the current expansion of its bases the U.S. has demanded that the South Korean government pay for the big changes taking place at these military outposts.  (My liberal Democrat Congresswoman Chellie Pingree calls it 'burden sharing by the host nation'.) Thus for the Korean people it is a double insult – not only is their government an occupied client state of the U.S. empire but the people must increasingly pay for unwanted toxic and dangerous U.S. military operations inside of their country.

Our guide today several times, while driving us around the perimeter of the two bases, said, “The U.S. is a bad country.”  I immediately thought how much I wished the American people could take this tour and hear his words. This remarkable activist also spent time in prison for trying to protect his people from the American assault on their culture and way of life. I was told that he helps take care of the elderly farmers who were not able to purchase new rice fields and now struggle to find ways to make money in order to survive.

I came away from Pyeongtaek feeling sad, ashamed of the U.S., and disgusted with those many American people who don’t really care what happens to the people around the world who are displaced by U.S. military bases – or are killed by the soldiers that make war from these outposts on behalf of corporate capitalism.