BUSAN — South Korea and the United States have agreed to strengthen cooperation to accelerate the transfer of wartime operational control of South Korean forces, the two sides said in a joint statement issued through their top-level defense consultative body.
The Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue (KIDD) said in the statement that the two sides "assessed efforts to modernize the alliance in response to changes in the security environment," and "reviewed progress on the Conditions-based Operational Control Transition Plan (COTP) and pledged to strengthen cooperation to accelerate the transfer of wartime operational control," according to the two countries' defense ministries on the 19th.
KIDD serves as a preparatory meeting ahead of the Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) between the two countries' defense ministers in November. Seoul went into this round of talks with the acceleration of the wartime command transfer as its core agenda item, sources said.
President Lee Jae-myung's administration is pursuing the transfer of wartime operational control within his term, by 2030, as a national policy goal. The government has internally concluded that the transfer could be completed as early as next year or the year after, according to sources.
The Defense Ministry aims to complete verification of the future combined forces command's full operational capability (FOC) at the SCM in November and to determine the year in which the transfer will take place, referred to as "Year X."
At the KIDD meeting held around this time last year, however, South Korea's Defense Ministry said in a separate briefing document that the two countries "shared the view that significant progress had been made in meeting the conditions for the transfer." No comparable explanation of progress on those conditions was offered at this year's meeting.
Other alliance issues may also have been discussed, including cooperation on South Korea's construction of a nuclear-powered submarine, joint management of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and the scaling back of combined military exercises.
The meeting is also believed to have taken up the question of dispatching troops to the Strait of Hormuz, which has emerged as a major security issue between the two countries.
Since the outbreak of the war with Iran early this year, Washington has repeatedly and publicly called on South Korea and other allies to contribute military assets, including warships, to the Strait of Hormuz.
The joint statement added that the two sides "reviewed the implementation of follow-up measures in the defense cooperation area of the joint fact sheet agreed between the leaders of the two countries and of the 57th SCM," and that participants "jointly visited major defense industry sites to strengthen cooperation in shipbuilding and aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO)."
The KIDD meeting was held in Busan for three days starting on the 16th. Kim Hong-chul, head of the Defense Ministry's Office of National Defense Policy, and George Ledvoor, U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia, led their respective delegations. It was the first time the KIDD meeting has been held somewhere other than Seoul or Washington.
KIDD was launched in 2011 as a high-level consultative body for effective security consultations between the two countries. This round came about four months after the 28th meeting, held in Washington in May.
