Since the Korean War, all American presidents have pursued the same basic policy toward the Korean Peninsula. The first priority for American presidents has been protecting, nurturing and promoting South Korea. During the Cold War, U.S. leaders regarded it as essential to check communist expansion and the deaths of nearly 34,000 Americans in the Korean War made it politically unacceptable at home to again risk the loss of South Korea. This led to the signing of a security treaty with the ROK in 1953, the stationing of American military forces in South Korea to this day and large-scale support for South Korea in earlier decades. Due to South Korea’s later economic success and democratization, Americans came to regard it as a model of the benefits