By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
Conservative politicians and scholars have called for developing a conceptual contingency plan on North Korea to a full-fledged operational one to cope with various levels of internal instability in the North, while liberal forces say such a move would only help escalate military tensions in the region as well as aggravate inter-Korean relations more.
According to senior military sources, South Korea and the United States want to transform CONPLAN 5029, a conceptual scenario to prepare for the collapse of North Korea, into OPLAN 5029 involving concrete action plans.
The topic would be high on the agenda at the forthcoming meeting of defense ministers from the two countries slated for next month, said the sources.
The South Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command drew up 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 the communist North, such as a mass inflow of North Korean refugees, a civil war provoked by revolt or coup, South Korean hostages being held in the North, natural disasters such as earthquakes and floods, and other unusual situations in the North.
Contingency situations include measures to prevent Pyongyang's weapons of mass destruction from being smuggled out of the North 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 OPLAN 5029 involving more specific contingency 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 action against North Korea and cause a full-scale war on the peninsula.
The council cited an alleged scenario under which the U.S. military could command South Korean military assets in the event of a North Korean collapse, to seize the North's key nuclear and military facilities.