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Aboard the USS Reagan in Hong Kong harbor.

Lots of foreigners sign up for hitches with the U.S. military as a shortcut to U.S. citizenship. It doesn’t always go smoothly.

The latest instance comes out of South Korea. Read this story from Yonhap news service to learn about a South Korean wanted on U.S. military desertion charges because he fled back to Seoul rather than deploy to Iraq.

South Korean and U.S. officials are dickering over what to do.

Apparently the 26-year-old, surnamed Kim, moved to the United States in 1992 and joined the military in 2003 in a bid to swap his green card for citizenship.

He left for South Korea two years later, saying his father was sick, then went “absent without leave” from the U.S. military. Five months ago, Kim joined the South Korean military.

It’s an odd case. It struck me because I was in Hong Kong last week just as ships belonging to the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier group were steaming in for a port call. Some 5,000 seamen were about to come ashore. The South China Morning Post printed an article about one crew member, Petty Officer Second Class Liu Baohua, from Xian, China. Her story captured my attention. I can't link because it's a subscription service but here is some of what the article said:

“Petty Officer Liu arrived in the US in 1996 to do a master's degree in technology after graduating from the Beijing University of Technology as a mechanical engineer.

Despite acquiring a green card, she couldn't find a suitable job. After hearing that President George W. Bush would fast-track citizenship for those who joined the armed forces, she signed up in 2003.”

Liu told the Morning Post that there were a further 10 crew members from the mainland and about 50 to 60 American-born Chinese on board.

Makes you wonder if there’s a single American aboard a Chinese military vessel.

Then again, the nature of the U.S. military is changing, it seems, with the Pentagon actively considering recruiting more foreigners, according to this Boston Globe article. It says the 30,000 or so non-citizens who serve in the U.S. armed forces make up about 2 percent of the active-duty force. About 100 such non-citizens have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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