By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The U.S. military is sharing more information on North Korea with its South Korean counterpart, following the North's nuclear and missile tests earlier this year, the top American military officer said Sunday.
The move was reflected during the recent Ulchi Freedom Guardian (UFG) joint exercise of the two militaries.
The allies tested a combined intelligence group and a new war plan to prepare for the transition of wartime operational control of South Korean troops from the U.S. military to South Korea in 2012, U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) Commander Gen. Walter Sharp was quoted by the Stars and Stripes as saying.
The computerized UFG exercise was conducted from Aug. 17 to 27 with the participation of 56,000 South Korean forces and 10,000 U.S. troops. The exercise was the second in which South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff served in a leading role with the U.S. military serving a supporting role.
"North Korea's spring nuclear tests and missile launches were essentially a dress rehearsal for the exercise," said Sharp, who concurrently serves as chief of the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command and the United Nations Command.
The North's provocative moves forced South Korean and U.S. commanders to work more closely on sharing information, and forced diplomats to coordinate their messages to the public and to North Korea, he said.
Both militaries, against that backdrop, tested some new organizations and procedures, including a combined intelligence group and a new war plan that outlines how they will operate together after 2012, the commander noted.
"We still have a ways to go ― we completely realize that ― but we have two and a half years to get it right," Sharp said, adding that during the exercise, the militaries simulated an "all-out" North Korean attack on the South ― "how we would stop them before they go to Seoul, and how we would continue to the ultimate end state of the defeat of the North Korean military.''
Under a 2007 agreement on command rearrangements, the U.S.-led CFC will be deactivated in April 17, 2012. The militaries will then launch separate theater commands.