hankyoreh

It is significant that Korea and the United States have agreed that Korea will hand over wartime command of its military beginning on April 17, 2012, because it brings closure to the issue as a whole. The main opposition Grand National Party and some conservative groups need to stop unnecessarily challenging the government on this issue and hurting the national interest in the process.

There was an amicable atmosphere at the meeting of the country’s defense chiefs at which the agreement was reached. It made you wonder why the issue had to be such a lightning rod over the last few months. We would like to think it had less to do with the fact that the U.S. has a new defense secretary and a changed North Korea policy, and more with the fact that both countries have a shared appreciation for what the future of the alliance should look like. This agreement will contribute in a big way to a U.S.-Korea alliance that is of a higher quality, one that is about mutual respect and the pursuit of common interests.

It is only a matter of course that a sovereign state has operational command of its military if it is to rightly carry out its duty and authority. What has now happened is that an abnormal situation has been corrected, one that has continued until today since operational command was quickly handed over to the commander of United Nations forces upon the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. In addition, if our country is going to be at the center of resolving issues relating to the Korean peninsula and the region, it is essential that we are given back operational command of our military. Without that right, we have less of a voice and less strength in negotiations with North Korea, and it becomes more difficult to assume leadership in the course of signing a peace treaty and the rest of the process of establishing peace on the peninsula. Whether or not we have operational command also influences how we decide for ourselves what a unified peninsula will look like.

Looking at receiving operational command as nothing more than an increase in defense expenditures is a militaristic view that is a remnant of Cold War thinking. It fails to see how our country is now far stronger overall than North Korea, and fails to take into account the new security environment that exists today. Some say getting operational command will mean the U.S.-Korea Combined Forces Command (CFC) gets dissolved, which will lead to problems in military cooperation between the two countries. However, if you consider that the handover happens five years from now, these are nothing more than unfounded fears. Calls for the handover to happen only when the North Korea nuclear issue is resolved are also unpersuasive.

It is one of the larger principles in the world that every country should decide its own fate. We have suffered on many occasions in our history for being unable to do this. Because of the "February 13 Agreement" at the six-party talks, we will soon have a forum for discussing a permanent peace regime for the peninsula. The process of handing over command authority and discussing a peace regime are intertwined. This is the beginning of an important time, one in which we draw with our own hands what the peninsula is going to look like in the 21st century.


Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]