SEOUL, Nov. 24 (UPI) -- The United States will reassign almost all of its 7,000 troops in Seoul, Korea, within a year, the Washington Times reported Monday.
Some of the troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and the disbanding of the U.N. headquarters in South Korea is also being considered, the newspaper said.
A primary reason for pulling back from South Korea is that the United States needs the 17,000 soldiers of the 2nd Infantry Division elsewhere. The U.S. Army has only 10 divisions and cannot afford to have one tied down in Korea, military officials have said.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the Korean news agency, Yonhap, the 2nd Division would not be sent to Iraq or Afghanistan but that individual soldiers serving in Korea almost certainly would be assigned to those nations.
The division itself will move to posts south of Seoul to be near airfields where soldiers will prepare for contingencies elsewhere in Asia. The 37,000 U.S. troops now in Korea will be cut to an undetermined number.
