"Will it be a substantial reduction? I do not believe so." ROK, or the Republic of Korea, is South Korea's official name. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the U.S. wants to hand over the wartime operation control and command (OPCON) to the South Korean side earlier than Seoul proposes. South Korea wants to assume control of the wartime OPCON after 2011, but the U.S. says it could be transferred in 2009. "From our standpoint, we have a lot more confidence in the capability of ROK and we have confidence on how quickly we can readjust and rewire the system," the official said. He said the subject is open for further discussion, but the goal is to have an agreement by October when defense chiefs of the two countries meet for their annual Security Consultative Meeting (SCM), which will be held in Washington this year. This year's SCM will unveil a roadmap on how South Korea and the U.S. will readjust their roles in an alliance that has been in place for more than half a century. The two countries have a mutual defense treaty signed in 1953 at the end of the fratricidal three-year Korean War. The U.S. presently maintains some 30,000 troops in South Korea, mainly as a deterrent against North Korea's 1.1-million-strong military, but the two allies have agreed to reduce it to 25,000 by end of 2008. South Korea, now the 10th largest economy in the world, wants to assume a bigger role and responsibility in its own defense, and retaining the wartime OPCON for its forces has been one of the symbols of that effort. South Korea turned over its OPCON to the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) soon after the outbreak of the Korean War but regained peacetime control in 1994. But under the current arrangement, the Asian ally would give control to the U.S. commander in time of war. The U.S. official said Seoul's request is a "reasonable" one whose "time has come." The question is more about "mechanics of interaction," he said, and "how the two parallel commands will interact with one another." Seoul officials have said that once wartime control is transferred, the two countries will have separate commands. But some critics, including South Korea's former defense leaders, have raised concerns that with the OPCON transfer, the U.S. will further reduce its presence in South Korea to below the agreed-upon 25,000 troop level. "If we adjust the way we are organized there... it's possible that we will have an additional reduction," he said, but added, "I would say there is no plan to relocate any significant combat capability out of ROK." For example, the official said South Korea may take over a mission, lessening the U.S. requirement there by 500 people while creating a new capability elsewhere requiring only 200 people. Other skeptics have also questioned whether South Korea is ready to take over wartime control within a few years. "In those cases where the ROK does not have complete capability in place by a certain date, we will continue to provide that capability," the American official said, "This is not a must-do-by-date X-type of situation." The official was emphatic in criticizing the lack of proper training range for the U.S. Air Force in South Korea, a problem he called a "very serious issue" that needs to be resolved separately from the alliance discussion. The U.S. says its Air Force cannot conduct bombing exercises since South Korea shut down a major target range in August last year. It has since taken its troops to another country to train them. "Now we have a situation where if this problem is not resolved in the near term, that is in the next couple of months, entire units will have to leave the peninsula on a rotating basis," the official said. "This is not a good signal... The worst signal you can send to North Korea is, you have to go off the Peninsula to train your forces," he said. "...It's a very bad signal for the alliance." Despite the South Korea-U.S. military readjustment, the UNC leader will remain a senior U.S. military commander, according to the official. "There is no consideration at this time of changing that," he said, "I don't think it would be appropriate to do so." There also isn't any plan to downgrade the UNC commander to a three-star instead of a four-star general, he said. The official put the focus of the alliance transition in terms of how conditions on the Korean Peninsula change. "It is the intent of ROK government, (the) current government, to deconflict as much as possible and reach a structured relationship with North Korea," he said. "What we are trying to do is to anticipate over the course of many years how the alliance might best adapt itself to a new reality that might be created on the Korean Peninsula." Washington, Aug. 7 (Yonhap News)
