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center) and leaders of civic groups chant slogans during a press conference at Dongducheon City Hall in Gyeonggi Province

On Oct. 24, the Blue House responded to accusations that the US and South Korean agreement to delay once more the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) of the South Korean military is a violation of a campaign pledge made by President Park Geun-hye. “This is something that should be viewed rationally and realistically from the perspective of national security. It is not a violation of Park’s campaign pledge,” Blue House spokesperson Min Kyung-wook said.

“The government’s position that South Korea must exercise wartime operational control over its own military remains unchanged. But when we consider the security situation, and the increasing threat of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missiles, we need to make more preparations for the OPCON transfer,” Min said during a briefing.

The Blue House had initially remained silent about the decision to delay the OPCON transfer and did not provide an explanation until accusations that Park had broken her campaign pledge to move forward with the OPCON transfer increased in intensity.

However, many aspects of the Blue House‘s explanation were ambiguous or contradictory, such as the claim that it had not broken the pledge even as it placed national security over carrying out the pledge, and that its position on the OPCON transfer was unchanged even though it was being delayed. As a result, the Blue House response is open to criticism as a hastily prepared excuse.

In November 2012, during her presidential election campaign, Park said at a press conference, “We have to prepare for the OPCON transfer without delay”. In February 2013, Park’s inauguration preparatory committee said they would move ahead with the transfer as planned.

During the morning briefing on Oct. 24, Min had responded to multiple questions about the delay of the OPCON transfer by saying that he had no prepared response. But when this fuelled controversy, the Blue House released a statement the same afternoon.

“We are definitely committed to the transfer of operational control of South Korean forces, and we will create an implementation system to back up our commitment by next year,” said Defense Minister Han Min-koo, in an attempt to assuage public opposition to the agreement. Han, who was in charge of the negotiations about delaying the OPCON transfer, made the remarks during a press conference held immediately after the 46th ROK-US Security Consultative Meeting that took place in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 23.

When a reporter pointed out that no timeframe had been specified for the OPCON transfer during the Security Consultative Meeting and asked whether the transfer wasn‘t effectively being postponed indefinitely, Han questioned the logic of this conclusion. “It is the Defense Ministry’s position that the conditions for the OPCON transfer will be satisfied by the mid-2020s. Our basic plan to carry out the OPCON transfer remains unchanged,” Han said.

The explanations made by the Blue House and the Defense Ministry on Friday were unilateral notices delivered to the public - after the agreement had already been made - that nothing could be done about delaying the OPCON transfer because of the security situation. This underscores once again the current administration’s problems with being uncommunicative. The abrupt decision to allow USFK to maintain bases at Yongsan and Dongdusan has thrown the urban planning of the affected areas into confusion, but the Blue House offered neither an apology nor an explanation about this.

The fact that the government did not inform the people or allow public debate of the national sovereignty that President Park promised during the election, despite negotiating the issue with the US for a year and a half, seems likely to continue provoking opposition in the future.

Oct. 24. The project to move US troops out of the area was delayed without Dongducheon‘s consultation

By Seok Jin-hwan, Blue House correspondent and Park Byong-su, senior staff writer

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