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There are strong indications that the US reluctance to accept the South Korean request to again delay the transfer of wartime operational control of the ROK military (OPCON) is feigned. The US seems set to push for the deployment of THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) with US forces on the Korean peninsula on the pretense of equipping ROK forces with key military capacity, one of the three conditions for the future OPCON transfer.

On Oct. 24, the day after it was announced that the OPCON transfer had been postponed indefinitely, John Hamre, former Deputy Secretary of Defense and current president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), invited Washington correspondents of South Korean media outlets for a meeting. CSIS is a think tank that is generally in line with the positions of the US Defense Department and companies in the defense industry.

Hamre expressed interest in meeting correspondents immediately after their breakfast meeting with South Korean Defense Minister Han Min-koo that morning. Hamre’s invitation to the reporters was highly irregular - indeed, it was unprecedented.

During the meeting, Hamre expressed his strong support for the decision made by the American and South Korean governments. “Korea has a strong military, and the OPCON transfer will no doubt occur at some point, but the right conditions need to be in place. Those conditions include Korea investing in strengthening its security capacity, structural changes occurring in the security environment, and ensuring that the OPCON transfer does not weaken Korean security,” Hamre said. These comments aptly sum up the American attitude toward the decision.

According to various sources at think tanks who are well-versed in affairs at the Pentagon, the US had been quietly frustrated as recently as mid-2013 about South Korea’s request to predicate the OPCON transfer based on certain conditions. That is why at the time the dominant argument was to fix a definite time for the transfer.

Eventually, however, the US came to accept the South Korean request. There were several reasons for that.

First of all, the US government was reportedly worried that the next South Korean administration would once again suggest delaying the transfer, as the Lee Myung-bak administration did in 2010. The prevailing view in the US is that the issue of the OPCON transfer is no longer just a military concern but has become the subject of political calculations inside South Korea. If it specifies a specific time for the transfer, the US fears, the topic will once again become a political issue.

Second, the condition that the ROK military must be equipped with key capability dovetails with the American plan to deploy high-tech intelligence and monitoring equipment and a missile defense system in Northeast Asia.

During a joint press conference held with Defense Minister Han Min-koo on Oct. 23, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that delaying the OPCON transfer again was intended to enable the ROK military to acquire the defense capability that it needed. The US and South Korea would intensify their cooperation in the areas of ballistic missile defense and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance in line with an overarching strategy, Hagel explained.

The US seems set to push for the deployment of THAAD in South Korea - a proposal that is currently shelved - as part of this process.

A source at a think tank who spoke on condition of anonymity said that he did not think the delay of the OPCON transfer and THAAD were directly connected. At the same time, he predicted that the US would propose dispatching THAAD once again after another North Korean nuclear test or long-range missile launch brought about a substantial change in South Korean public opinion.

Third, American strategy for Northeast Asia demands that it strengthen the trilateral system of security cooperation between South Korea, the US, and Japan. Retaining wartime operational control of South Korean forces is helpful in this regard.

“With the current tension between Japan and China, the US is very concerned about conflict between South Korea and Japan. The US retaining OPCON could be helpful in bolstering trilateral security cooperation,” said Jonathan Pollack, senior fellow at the Center for East Asia Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution.

“Publically, the US only emphasizes the North Korean threat as a reason for deploying THAAD in South Korea. However, THAAD would also be meaningful for countering China. This is also true of maintaining OPCON,” another source said.

Finally, the US is very concerned about how the South Korean government has announced its plans to retaliate against North Korean provocations. Transferring OPCON to South Korea could increase the likelihood of a small, accidental incident between North and South Korea escalating into a major conflict.

By Park Hyun, Washington correspondent

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