ABSTRACT
The alliance between the United States and the Republic of Korea (ROK) has withstood numerous challenges since the end of the Korean War on July 27, 1953. Through it all, it has remained a strong deterrent against North Korean aggression, and a source of regional stability in East Asia (Kim 2012). The stability has not come easily. While South Korea is a prosperous economic power in East Asia and a transparent democracy at the outset of the twenty-first century, conditions in the early years of the nation were not nearly as ideal. Since the 1950s, the ROK–U.S. alliance has had to undergo gradual and sometimes extreme changes, largely because of political and/or economic change in South Korea. This chapter will address key moments in the ROK–U.S. military alliance that have occurred since 1953.
