As many as 700 South Korean scholars and lawyers have singed a petition asking their government to stop moves to regain wartime operational control of its troops from the U.S. within several years, the group said Tuesday.
About 40 of those signatories showed up at a news conference in Seoul, during which they issued a statement warning that the plan would endanger South Korea's national security in the face of threats from North Korea.
About 90 percent of the group members are college professors and lawyers, it said. They included Kim Tae-gil, head of the National Academy of Science.
This was the latest conservative voice in South Korea against President Roh Moo-hyun's proposal to take over the wartime control by 2012. The U.S. has suggested 2009.
"We strongly denounce the government's plan to receive the wartime operational control from the U.S.," they said in a statement. "We're not strong enough to handle the wartime operational control yet."
South Korea voluntarily put its military under the control of U.S.-led U.N. forces at the 1950 start of the Korean War. It took back its peacetime control in 1994 but the wartime control is still in the hands of the top U.S. military commander in the country.
The two allies plan to make a final decision at an annual meeting of their defense chiefs in Washington in October.
"Seoul is being overly confident, while Washington is reacting irrationally," the statement said. "This is not the right timing for us to receive the wartime operational control," "The wartime operational control in the U.S. hands has been and will be the most effective and cheapest way to deter possible aggression by North Korea," Jeong Jin-wi, honorary professor at Yonsei University, said. "It is the surest means of preventing war on our land."
A group of several dozen retired generals and former defense ministers has recently issued a similar statement opposing the wartime control transfer to South Korea.
South and North Korea are still technically at war, with no peace treaty signed at the end of the three-year Korean conflict.
About 30,000 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against the North.
Seoul, Sept. 5 (Yonhap News)
S. Korean scholars oppose wartime control transfer |
