By Tong Kim
After two years of sojourn in Seoul, I am returning to Washington Friday this week. But I plan to continue to write this column from Washington, where I will keep my affiliation with the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) as a fellow at the newly created U.S. Korea Institute. I will teach a course at SAIS in the 2008 spring semester.
In addition to teaching and researching at Korea University, I have been writing and giving talks extensively on the North Korean nuclear issue and U.S. relations with the two Koreas. I have participated in many conferences and seminars on these topics, and learned a lot from them.
Korean specialists who watch U.S. policy on the Korean Peninsula are clearly divided into two groups _ conservative and liberal. During my stay the conservatives have been much more vocal and have outnumbered the liberals in a rough ratio of four to one.
The conservatives, while supporting the security alliance with the United States, strongly disapprove of the engagement policy of the Roh Moo-hyun government toward the North. Their views are backed by the conservative newspapers, including ``the big three."
Recently the liberals seem to have been defensive, though not apologetic. When the liberals sponsor a conference, it is often hindered by participants in the audience of an older generation who detest the North Korean regime from a moral perspective.
Some liberal groups try to exchange views with the conservatives in vain, who want to see Kim Jong-il's system somehow go away. The conservatives hold a black and white moral outlook on the matter.
Being the minority, the liberals are still defiantly in control of government policy. And this frustrates and angers the conservatives, who are rallying against the Roh government. They are concerned what more damage the departing government might do to the nation.
Wrapping up my learning experience in Korea, I want to share with the readers my ``realist" assessments of a couple of critical current issues that affect the security interests of the Korean people and the common interest of the United States and South Korea as allies.
On the alliance, the most critical issue at this point is that of the transfer of the wartime operational control scheduled for April 2012.
The agreements on other issues _ such as redeployment and consolidation of U.S. forces to Pyeongtaek under the concept of strategic flexibility, relocation of the Yongsan base, and the curtailment of the U.S. troop level are all done-deals, and they are only matters of implementation. The plans are already more than a year behind schedule, but they will be carried out.
However, the issue of wartime operational control is still not settled in Korea. Once the control is transferred to Korea, the Combined Forces Command, which has successfully served to deter a renewed war in Korea, will be dismantled. South Korea will be responsible for its own defense, while the United States will only play a supporting role.
South Korea will have to write a new war plan to replace the OPLAN 5027. The U.S. believes South Korea is capable of defending itself, if it invests in its defense with its resources.
The problem is the magnitude of such investment would be so great that it would make no economic sense. Sovereign exercise of command control may bring the effect of a psychological pride but it won't bring practical security benefits, because any independent Korean war plan would not guarantee the massive involvement of U.S. forces as does the current combined war plan.
Even when Korea pays 50 percent of the burden sharing cost (now it pays 41 percent), it would be far less costly than paying for taking over the operational control.
Peace efforts with the North may create a favorable political environment, but it does not mitigate the threat level that comes from the physical military capability of North Korea _ with forward deployments of conventional forces employing artillery pieces, rocket launchers and missiles, not to mention the threat of North Korean nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
Until the day lasting peace is secured, through the resolution of the nuclear issue and the establishment of an effective peace regime and the realization of arms reductions on both sides of Korea, a strong military alliance with the United States is indispensable.
GNP presidential candidate Lee Myung-bak has already said his government, if elected, will renegotiate the transfer arrangement.
It is clear that it was Roh Moo-hyun who first asked for the transfer and that the United States, after witnessing a terrifying eruption of anti-Americanism in the wake of the killing of two girl students, gladly agreed to turn it over to Korea.
In an interview in the latest issue of the Shindonga monthly magazine, Richard Lawless, who recently retired as deputy undersecretary of defense after serving six years in charge of East Asia security affairs, details U.S. complaints about the governments of Kim Dae Jung and Roh Moo-hyun for failing to defend the South Korea-U.S. alliance.
It does not matter who started or who is responsible for the origin of the problem. But it matters what to do about it. The Bush administration obviously does not welcome a revisit to the operational control issue.
The transfer offers several attractive advantages to the U.S. _ more flexibility, freedom from a trip wire effect, less responsibility and less burden for ground troops.
In my personal view, it is possible to renegotiate the deal if the next Korean government wants, even though it would be almost impossible to do so during the remainder of the Bush administration. We are reminded of how President Carter's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Korea was frustrated in the 1970s.
On the North South summit in October: I wrote in the August 10 edition of the Korea Times that Kim Jong-il should make an unequivocal commitment to complete denuclearization in order to dispel lingering suspicions that he will not give up his nuclear weapons. A positive statement of this nature will help make further progress at the six-party talks.
Without the resolution of the nuclear issue, all the things on the wish list _ including a peace mechanism on the Korean Peninsula, normalization between North Korea and the United States _ will fall apart. I still don't believe the United States would accept a partial solution that may allow the North to keep the weapons that it has already developed.
A peace declaration from the summit may have some impact on the December 19 presidential election, but it would have no practical effect on the ending of the armistice agreement without the participation and endorsement of China and the United States, who are the original signatories of the ceasefire agreement.
This kind of declaration, short of Kim Jong-il's firm confirmation that the DPRK will give up all its nuclear weapons, would not seriously affect the prospect of who will win the December election.
Any promise President Roh may make to the North Korean leader will not have any binding effect on the next president's choice of action. Kim Jong-il knows this: he learned that policies do change at a transition of government as they did when President Bush first came into power.
The next president, whoever that will be, will have the authority to discontinue, alter, or continue his predecessor's policy.
Tong Kim is former senior interpreter at the U.S. State Department and now a visiting scholar at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He can be reached at tong.kim@prodigy.net