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This is a book review in Hankyoreh, south Korea's top center-left liberal paper.

Excerpts:

The book is “The Naked ROK-US Alliance,” written by Daegu University professor Kim Sung-hae, who completed a master’s in international affairs at the University of Georgia and a doctorate in journalism at the University of Pennsylvania.

As the book’s subtitle suggests, this book lists the “reasons for resolving to break up with America”

The first reason the author provides is the cost of the alliance. To maintain the alliance with the US, Korea must lend military bases free of charge, foot part of the bill for stationing US troops on the peninsula and be a major buyer of US-made weapons.

On top of these financial expenses are opportunity costs — the potential value of the numerous options Korea has had to forgo because of the alliance. Perhaps best-known was Korea’s decision to let the US deploy the THAAD missile-defense battery in 2016. That turned China, which had been Korea’s bi

Excerpts:

Fifty-nine years ago, on Sept. 11, 1964, Korea sent 140 soldiers belonging to the medical corps to Vietnam as part of the war effort. Over the nine years that followed, South Korea would end up sending a total of 346,393 troops to fight in Vietnam in its Blue Dragon, Fierce Tiger, and White Horse divisions.

In 1999, Hankyoreh 21 broke the story that South Korean troops had massacred civilians in Vietnam with in-depth reporting. More than 20 years later, in February of this year, a South Korean court ruled that the country bears a legal liability to those victimized by these massacres. However, the South Korean government still insists that no such slaughter occurred.

This is the first time that Bình Thanh is being named in the history of Korea’s involvement in the Vietnam War that began in 1964. Bình Thanh is not mentioned in the official “War History of ROK Forces to Vietnam” published by Korea’s Department of Defense in 1979.

57 years ago, as a 10-year-old girl,