By Kang Seung-woo
Korea and the United States will hold a high-level defense meeting in Seoul next week to discuss the timing of the planned wartime operational control (OPCON) transfer, the defense ministry announced, Friday.
The Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue (KIDD) is scheduled for Tuesday ahead of next month’s Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) in Washington, where the two nations’ defense ministers are expected to agree on the delayed handover.
The talks will be led by Ryu Je-seung, chief of the Office of Planning and Coordination at the defense ministry, and David Helvey, deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia.
“They will discuss proper conditions and the timeframe for the transfer,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
With the OPCON transfer slated for December 2015, Seoul asked the U.S. in May of last year to reconsider the process, citing continuing threats from North Korea. Then Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin and U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel agreed in October that the handover should be conducted depending on conditions on the Korean Peninsula, indicating the U.S. has all but agreed to Korea’s request.
The Korean side is reportedly attempting to push back the transfer five to seven years, until somewhere between 2020 and 2022.
“Each side has put forth their own version of the transfer scenario. Before the SCM next month, the two sides will strive to find the optimal timeframe and conditions for the transfer,” said a defense ministry official.
Following the senior-level talks, the allies are scheduled to hold a two-day KIDD plenary session starting Wednesday to explore ways to boost joint deterrence against intensifying nuclear and missile threats from North Korea, the ministry said.
“Korea and the U.S. will seek ways to effectively implement and further strengthen combined deterrence and defense capabilities amid ongoing nuclear and missile aggression from North Korea,” it said.
Since last spring, the Kim Jong-un regime has stepped up threats on the peninsula, continuously testing its missiles and rockets along with its third nuclear test in February 2013. In a recent aggression, it fired three short-range rockets into the East Sea.
In 2007, Korea and the U.S. agreed that the transition would be carried out on April 17, 2012, before further delaying it after the Navy ship Cheonan was sunk by a North Korean torpedo in March 2010.
Seoul handed over both wartime and peacetime operational control of its armed forces to the U.S. in July 1950, a month after Pyongyang started the three-year-long Korean War. Seoul regained peacetime operational control in late 1994.