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Civic group leaders call for the dissolution of the United Nations Command (UNC) at the National Assembly on Sept. 17. (Yonhap News)
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United Nations Command pushes involvement in crisis management on Korean Peninsula
South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense and the United Nations Command (UNC) have initiated high-level deliberations in order to address a disagreement over the status and role of the US-led UNC after wartime operational control, or OPCON, of the South Korean military is returned to Seoul. During a command post exercise that was recently carried out by South Korea and the US, the two sides reportedly debated whether the UNC would participate in crisis management on the Korean Peninsula following the OPCON transfer and whether the UNC would exercise command over the future Combined Forces Command (CFC), which will be led by a South Korean four-star general. “The Defense Ministry’s policy chief recently met the UNC deputy commander and traded opinions about a number of issues related to the UNC,” Defense Ministry spokesperson Choi Hyun-soo said on Sept. 17. “The role of the UNC is to ensure compliance with the armistice agreement in accordance with UN Security Council resolutions and to provide troops to the CFC in the event of war. The two officials discussed our respective opinions on these matters,” Choi said. Though Choi didn’t state this explicitly, his remarks suggest that the discussion also covered the recent debate over the UNC’s role. The Defense Ministry appears to have arranged the high-level deliberations with the UNC after concerns were raised that the US is attempting to turn the UNC into a body for controlling the South Korean military. If a war broke out on the Korean Peninsula after the OPCON transfer and the UNC decided that the war represented only a violation of, and not the nullification of, the armistice agreement, it could override the operational control otherwise exercised by the future CFC, led by the South Korean military. The Terms of Reference (TOR) reached by the South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff, the UNC, and the CFC at the time of the CFC’s establishment in 1978 apparently includes a clause stating that the CFC must respect the authority of the UNC and comply with requests aimed at maintaining the armistice agreement. Other circumstances that have received attention are the recent appointment of Canadian and Australian generals as deputy commander of the UNC, a position formerly held by the commander of US Forces Korea (USFK), and the assignment of an American general who is not part of USFK to UNC’s chief of staff. Concerns have been raised that the US is attempting to decouple the UNC from USFK in order to turn it into a multilateral military body that can control the South Korean military. In the Korean translation of a 2019 military digest recently published by USFK, the US said it would strengthen military cooperation with Japan, sparking a debate about whether the US intends to treat Japan as a UNC “sending state.” South Korea’s Defense Ministry and the UNC are reportedly in agreement about institutionalizing the high-level deliberations. “We also have a lot of opinions to share with the UNC in regard to matters such as the implementation of the Comprehensive Military Agreement [reached on Sept. 19, 2018]. My understanding is that some kind of understanding was also reached about deliberating these issues through a high-level framework,” said a source at the Defense Ministry. By Yoo Kang-moon, senior staff writer Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]
