Special to The Japan Times

SEOUL -- One hundred years of tumultuous history have come to a close with the end of a century that has witnessed the end of great power dominance on the Korean Peninsula and the beginnings of Korean political reawakening. China, Russia, Japan and the United States together have, in turn, intruded into Korea's internal affairs and imposed their own political regimes or exercised political control indirectly through the manipulation of Korean political leaders. The U.S. still provides the military underpinning for the Peninsula's security architecture, a role that the other major powers and the South Koreans have come to accept as a natural part of the security landscape. Today, a U.S. military presence is favored by both Seoul and Washington, and is projected to remain even after unification.

In addition, the U.S. should be credited with playing a leading role in the democratization of South Korea,. Efforts by U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur from 1986-87 forced popular presidential elections on a reluctant military, thus paying the way for the election of an opposition leader, Kim Dae Jung, a decade later. This was perhaps America's finest hour during the entire post-Korean War period, having previously been overly tolerant of the excesses of military rule during the Cold War in the interests of national security.