A friend of mine asked me this when I posted the above article on facebook:
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If the U.S. did pull their military out, wouldn't that jeopardize your life, seeing as you live there?
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To which I responded:
As a more serious address to your question, i'm not exactly sure the threat of a NK attack is as looming as a lot of the West thinks. If we left, yes, SK would be more much more vulnerable than they are now, but whether or not that would be enough for Kim Jong Il to actually invade would remain to be seen. Bottom line is that it's not our country, and we've been here as a nanny military long enough. 60 years is more than enough for a country to take it's own military into it's own hands, especially one as wealthy as SK.
Also, and take this however you will, it might do this country some good to get invaded or at least threatened with the US military not hanging around like a gigantic older brother does behind a shit-talking little brat. Many of the younger generation was not in power or even born when the Korean War happened, and they seem to have forgotten the chain of events during it. Not to tout "USA SAVED YOUR ASS!" like a lot of Americans here do who obviously had nothing to do with it, teachers and GI's alike, moreso of the fact that they still are trying to reconcile with a country that INVADED it. Which would be totally understandable, if there was some degree of behavior modification since then (See: North/South in the USA, Early America/Britain), but there hasn't been any. NK is still as nationalistic and crazy as they were during the Korean War.
Point being is that the military here really doesn't seem to be appreciated by about anybody, including the soldiers here, who seem to (at least the ones i've talked to) not enjoy their stay much whatever. SK is still very much a nationalist country as well, and they're pretty much in a love/hate with the United States. They like having us here for tactical military reasons, but even as a teacher I can honestly say they should have started phasing out their current HIGH NEED for foreign English teachers like 10 years ago, or earlier. It's amazing how little English seems to stay with most adult Koreans, given that they usually start learning in public school (let alone after school private schools, which most kids go to also -- and where I teach) from about 7 years old, at the latest.
I've been in Korea for a little over a year, and have had no classes, and can still get by on a little amount of Korean. With as long as they've been learning from professional English speakers in this country, not only should their be ANY KONGLISH ANYWHERE, they should have their own, professional, Korean English teachers teaching English here instead of having to massively outsource overseas. But they don't, and I think a big part of that is their nationalism. I.E., they don't respect the English language enough to know it fluently, because it's not Korean.