God, the press is sooooo imcompetent. Saw this out on Friday. This was out of a leaked S. Korean internal gov't "document". Not as this article states. Secondly, the numbers quoted are absurd. There are not 690,000 u.s. troops, and there is no way the u.s. would send anywhere near those numbers to protect S. Korea. We are pulling troops outta there partly due to lack of respect. This is an intential "leak" to get the N. Koreans to engage in talks. Nothing else.
Not quite true. The Army alone has more than that, if you include it's reserve components. Add in a goodly number of Air Force, Navy and Marines (including their reserve forces as appropriate) and we could field that many without sending nearly the whole DoD. How we would get them to the Korean AO is an entirely different question.