The United States has notified Seoul it will redeploy 3,600 US troops stationed in South Korea for combat duty in Iraq this summer.
Lieutenant Commander Flex Plexico, a Pentagon spokesman, confirmed Monday that the troops from the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division will be sent to the war-torn nation by August.
Plexico said that, after months of study, the U.S. army recently came to the conclusion that the best unit to provide Iraq reinforcements was going to come from South Korea.
Plexico said it should not be inferred that the withdrawal of the troops would lead to a permanent reduction of U.S. force levels in South Korea, stressing that the redeployment was part of a phased rotation of U.S. forces in Iraq.
In Baghdad, Brigadier General Mark Kimmit, the US military spokesman in Iraq, said the U.S. plan to move some of its troops in South Korea to Iraq was not necessitated by the tactical situation in Iraq, but an issue that had been in discussion for a long time between Washington and Seoul.
Thirty-seven thousand American troops have been stationed in South Korea since the end of the Korean War to help deter an invasion by North Korea.