SEOUL, Oct 15 (Reuters) – South Korea’s Defence Ministry spokesperson said on Thursday that continually changing the requirements for transferring wartime operational control from the United States could make the handover impossible.
“Speaking in a personal capacity, I think that if the goalposts keep moving, wartime operational control can never be transferred,” spokesperson Jeong Bit-na told a regular news briefing.
She said the comment was not the ministry’s official position, which remained that Seoul and Washington were working closely under their mutually agreed conditions-based transition plan.
Her remarks followed comments by US Forces Korea commander General Xavier Brunson, who on Wednesday said that the security environment and operational plans had changed since the allies established the transfer requirements.
“Because the conditions have changed, because we’ve changed our plan, we have new standards which we have to uphold,” Brunson said at an event hosted by the Gold Institute for International Strategy in Washington.
He cited North Korea’s recent missile launches as evidence of the changing security environment, saying he supported the transition but opposed bypassing agreed requirements and stressing the need for critical military capabilities.
South Korean media have reported that Seoul favours 2028 as the target year for the transfer, while Brunson told a US congressional hearing in April that the US military had submitted a roadmap aimed at meeting the conditions by early 2029.
Some media outlets, citing military sources, have also reported that Washington believes Seoul has not met the criteria for completing the Full Operational Capability verification, the second of three stages in the transition process.
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has said he aims to complete the transfer, pursued by successive governments for decades, before his five-year term ends in 2030.
Seoul regained peacetime operational control in 1994, but command of allied forces during wartime remains with the US-led Combined Forces Command.
(Reporting by Kyu-seok ShimEditing by Ed Davies)
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