Lee Jae Myung reiterates desire for full command back in Seoul’s hands after Donald Trump cuts joint exercises, citing warm ties with Kim Jong-un
South Korea’s president has renewed his push to regain independent control of the military from the US in the event of war and urged faster progress in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines after Donald Trump’s order to cut joint drills.
On Sunday night, Trump instructed the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” this week’s joint military exercises with South Korea, saying the nuclear-armed North “has been unthreatening and respectful” and that the US president had a “very good relationship with Kim Jong-un”.
Lee Jae Myung said on Tuesday that Seoul should proceed without disruption with the planned transfer, during his term, of wartime operational control, or Opcon, of South Korean forces from the US – a goal he and the government have long held.
The real danger is that a SK government in the future will decide to risk it and invade the north. The follow on effects in China and Japan could be highly destabilizing, even assuming South Korea’s industrial capacity survives unscathed. But I suppose the world has moved beyond “stability” as an end goal, and rolling the dice for the fate of billions is just another Friday night.
Why would any SK government go that far with the present circumstances? Seoul which is a city of outsize importance to SK would get promptly flattened by some combination of nuclear weapons and massive amounts of conventional artillery that has been pointed there for decades. Military giants China and/or Russia may decide to aid or defend their more politically aligned direct neighbor, even if for no other reason than to keep their border areas from falling into chaos. SK would likely be diplomatically isolated for undertaking such aggressive action, possibly sanctioned as well which would be massively painful to a country that trades as much as they do. All while the last people who remember a united Korea are well on their way to dying out. The war is hard enough if won and if somehow NK were to win the SK politicians who hypothetically launched the invasion would be in big trouble. But even with victory after the war they have to reckon with rebuilding not just surely massively damaged SK but also the north which was impoverished even before it was bombed out, handling the likely tens of millions of IDPs across both sides and simultaneously integrating couple tens of millions of people raised under a completely different system. And all this while ditched by their regular sponsor who declared a desire to support the other side.
Because South Korea genuinely wants reunification, and if a future government believes that a stalemate is not achieving that they may explore other approaches. The US has been supporting South Korean defense, but has also been working to maintain the status quo in cases where SK has wanted to take a more aggressive stance.