By Kim Tae-gyu
South Korea and the United States will set up a new joint military command to replace the current Combined Forces Command (CFC), Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin said Saturday.
“As the current joint command system is desirable, we concur that we have to carry out things in such a direction,” Kim was quoted by the Ministry of National Defense as telling reporters after meeting U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
Korea is scheduled to take over wartime operational control (OPCON) of its troops in late 2015. This means the abolition of the CFC.
Kim confirmed that a Korean general will be put in charge of the new command structure covering the Korean Peninsula.
“In the new structure, Korean staff will outnumber Americans two to one,” a ministry official said, adding that it will be the first time that the U.S. will cede joint command to a general of another country in peacetime.
Details of the plan will be fleshed out in the months to come.
“With regard to the new entity, we have to deal with many complicated issues through working-level meetings. We aim to reach agreements by the Security Consultative Meeting (SCM),” Kim said.
The 45th annual SCM is scheduled to take place this October in Seoul where a variety of security issues will be discussed between the long-time allies.
Asked about whether there would be negative opinion in the U.S. about its soldiers being under the command of a Korean, Kim said there may be some problems, but those would not bar the establishment of the new joint command.
Originally, Seoul and Washington mulled setting up two separate commands after the transition of the wartime OPCON but that plan was scrapped due to its envisaged inefficiency.
The two sides then reached a consensus on maintaining a CFC-like joint body headed by a Korean four-star general. The current CFC is headed by a U.S. four-star general with a Korean deputy. The hierarchy would be opposite for the new entity.
Kim said he did not talk about such issues in his first meeting with his U.S. counterpart, which he said was more about exchanging greetings rather than delving into thorny topics.
But he said during the 30-minute meeting the two heads spoke about dealing with the escalating missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.
In 1950, the South relinquished wartime and peacetime operational control of its troops to the U.S. soon after the Korean War (1950-53) broke out. Seoul took back peacetime control in 1994 and is supposed to regain wartime control in 2015.
However, voices have sprung up of late that the wartime command restoration should be delayed as Pyongyang continues to ramp up its nuclear and missile threats.
In the meantime, the two defense chiefs also met together with their Japanese counterpart Itsunori Onodera to coordinate policies on North Korea. They agreed to cooperate to deter North Korean provocations.