US Military Deployment and Its Effects on South Korea’s Politics and Economy

Abstract

Due to the lack of studies on the effects of US troops on an individual host state, we studied the effects of US troops on South Korea’s politics and economy. Based on security enhancement benefits, we hypothesized that USFK would have positive effects on South Korea’s investment, trade, economic growth, and political development. Employing Heo and Ye’s empirical models, we conducted statistical analyses and found that the effects of USFK on South Korea’s trade, democracy level, and economic growth are statistically insignificant and the effect of USFK on investment is negative and statistically significant. These findings need to be cross-validated with a different measure of estimating USFK’s effects because our measure, size of USFK, may not capture its effects completely although there is no other measure.