By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter

South Korea and the United States should maintain about 460,000 troops to deal with any unusual situation on the Korean Peninsula that results from internal instability in North Korea, says a new report published by a private U.S. foreign policy organization Wednesday.

The figure represents a three-fold increase in the number of U.S. troops currently deployed to Iraq.

The report released by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) said the United States should put top priority on securing North Korea's nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) if the communist state collapses, according to Yonhap News Agency.

The authors believe Pyongyang possesses six to eight nuclear weapons as well as several ballistic missiles and 4,000 tons of chemical weapons. China might also try to secure the North's WMDs in the case of an emergency, they forecast.

As for a power transfer in North Korea, the report suggests three scenarios. They are its leader Kim Jong-il picking a successor; competition among those already in power; and a failure in regime change.

In the case of the latter ― through an internal fight or a power vacuum ― various types of situations could occur, the report said. These include inter-Korean conflicts near the Demilitarized Zone or the Northern Limit Line in the West Sea, mass defections and a food crisis.

Last year, local reports said South Korea and the United States were preparing to map out specific courses of military action to cope with potential internal turmoil in the communist North.

The two sides agreed to transform a conceptual scenario to prepare for the collapse of North Korea into a full-fledged operational plan, the reports said.

The South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command drew up a conceptual action plan to respond to sudden changes in North Korea, codenamed CONPLAN 5029, in 1999.

The plan includes outlines for joint military responses by South Korean and U.S. troops to various levels of internal turmoil in North Korea, according to sources.

Contingencies include a mass inflow of North Korean refugees, a civil war provoked by a revolt or coup, South Korean hostages being held in the North, and natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods.

The plan also includes measures to prevent Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction from being smuggled out of the country, if the regime was involved in a domestic crisis or suddenly collapses.

In 2005, the Roh Moo-hyun administration, which pursued a policy of greater independence from the United States, rejected a U.S. proposal to develop the conceptual plan to an operational plan involving more specific scenarios.

Roh's National Security Council said it had vetoed the proposal because the operational plan could infringe on South Korea's sovereignty and the U.S. military could conduct unilateral military action against North Korea and cause a full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula.

gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr