Cancellation and Reduction of Major Military Exercises Could Impact Seoul’s Ability to Take Over OPCON
It will be interesting to see if the Moon administration will possibly delay the turn over of OPCON responsibilities due to the scale down of joint military exercises:
Seoul is in a dilemma over annual military exercises with Washington, trying to balance diplomacy with Pyongyang while staying on track for the transfer of wartime operational control (Opcon).
President Moon Jae-in pledged since he took office in 2017 that the transfer of Opcon from Washington to Seoul should take place within his five-year term, and to carry this out, stable and regular joint military drills need to be conducted.
However, those combined military exercises don’t help denuclearization negotiations with Pyongyang. Major Seoul-Washington exercises have been postponed, suspended or scaled down for the sake of diplomacy with the North since early 2018.
Seoul’s Ministry of National Defense gave a briefing to Moon on Tuesday at the Gyeryongdae military complex in South Chungcheong on its comprehensive policy plan for this year.
Joong Ang Ilbo
You can read more at the link, but the transfer of OPCON is such a political goal for the Moon administration, I think it will be hard for them to delay it.
Boo Hoo. Now into third decade of this issue. ROKS don’t want OPCON. As I recall it dissolves CFC. No US personnel should be commanded by the ROK. Also, I believe it removes USFK warfighting role to a support role. Please correct me if my recollection is wrong.
Actual new OPCON transfer really doesn’t change anything. CFC stays, just now a ROK 4 star as “commander”. More smoke and mirrors from commie moon.
So with hostilities US personnel will have a ROK Commander. Time for the US to move out and for numurous reasons.
All I can say is if this gets to a discussion beyond us armchair generals, I’m going to need a better video card, a better monitor, and more popcorn.