By Na Jeong-ju
Staff Reporter
South Korea and the United States have devised a joint action plan in case the North Korean regime collapses or other internal emergency situations in the communist North arise, a senior defense official said Sunday.
The so-called ``Operational Plan (OPLAN) 5029,'' calls for joint military responses by Seoul and Washington to various types of internal instability ― a civil war, an outflow of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the kidnapping of South Korean citizens, a mass influx of refugees and natural disasters.
``If the South Korea-U.S. combined forces intervene in North Korea's internal instabilities, the South Korean military will assume the leading role in consideration of neighboring countries, while the U.S. military will be responsible for the removal of the North's nuclear facilities and weapons,'' an official said on condition of anonymity.
He noted that South Korea and the U.S. will continue to complement and develop specific details of OPLAN 5029.
The agreement came years after Washington proposed the action plan to tackle contingency situations in North Korea, a move Seoul once rejected out of fear that it would provoke Pyongyang.
The two allies developed a conceptual plan in case the North Korean regime collapsed, dubbed CONPLAN 5029, in 1999. With the inauguration of President Lee Myung-bak in February last year, the two sides resumed discussions to transform the plan into a full-fledged operational one.
The move comes as South Korea is moving to participate in the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) aimed at interdicting North Korean and other nations' ships suspected of carrying materials that could be used for WMDs.
``There are various case-by-case scenarios in the OPLAN 5029,'' the official said ``Both countries' troops will conduct contingency operations jointly or independently in accordance with emerging situations.''
The previous Roh Moo-hyun administration wanted South Korean forces to lead most operations in the case of an emergency on the Korean Peninsula, in line with the planned takeover of wartime operational control of its troops from the U.S. military in 2012.
The United States actually proposed in 2005 that CONPLAN 5029 be updated into OPLAN 5029. But the Roh administration rejected the proposal, arguing the plan could infringe on the country's sovereignty and cause a full-scale war on the peninsula should the U.S. military conduct unilateral action against North Korea.