South Korea is the world’s only country where the wartime operational control (OPCON) of its armed forces has been transferred to another country, namely the US, because of a combination of historical factors. Despite several attempts to take back the right, it will remain in the hands of America until the mid-2020s, according to the two countries’ joint security conference in 2014.
To facilitate the transfer, the Moon Jae-in government of South Korea formulated a national defense reform plan on January 11, prioritizing building national defense forces and thereby realizing “independent national defense.” The country’s ultimate goal is to take back wartime OPCON, but it is hard to pull off, wrote columnist Xu Bingjun on opinion site guancha.cn.
First, by the existing arrangement, aside from securing personnel and equipment and vanquishing enemies during wartime, the US and its garrisons in South Korea are also tasked with guaranteeing its influence in the region. Therefore, wartime OPCON is not just a military issue, but a political one that is closely related to the US’s regional strategy, he said.
Despite its plan to increase national defense input, South Korea’s armed forces are not strong enough to singlehandedly guarantee its security, he noted. An important point is that it does not have its own independent command system.
Its peacetime military command system, restricted to the development and training of the South Korean military, is distinct from the one during wartime. The latter includes command concepts, systems and processes, and particularly a comprehensive intelligence system. At present the country depends significantly on the US forces for intelligence, Xu said.
Neither has South Korea independent systems to develop weapons, as it currently relies deeply on the US for such equipment. The core technologies and components of its self-developed warplanes and warships come from the US, Xu wrote.
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