Seoul Reviews U.S. Military Ties

Seoul Reviews U.S. Military Ties. By JAY SOLOMON
WSJ, May 31, 2010

In the wake of North Korea's alleged sinking of a South Korean naval vessel, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak's government is reviewing its long-term defense policy in ways that could significantly impact the Washington-Seoul military alliance, according to officials engaged in the reform process here and in the U.S.

Over the past week, U.S. and South Korean leaders have outlined plans to conduct new war games and strategy sessions to better equip the South for combating the type of submarine attack Pyongyang is accused by international investigators to have staged this March, killing 46 South Korean sailors.

But longer-term, Mr. Lee's conservative government also could seek to alter the alliance's command structure and Seoul's weapons arsenal in ways that would challenge the Pentagon's current strategic planning for Northeast Asia, according to these officials.

South Korean defense strategists already are publicly pressing Mr. Lee to delay the planned 2012 transfer of operational control of the combined U.S.-South Korean fighting force to Seoul from Washington, arguing South Korea isn't prepared yet to oversee American forces. The agreement between Washington and Seoul has a clause that allows South Korea's president to formally request a suspension of the transfer. The U.S. currently deploys 29,000 troops in South Korea, and the South Korean military deploys 600,000.

Some South Korean officials involved in the president's military-reform drive also are calling for Seoul to develop more offensive strategic weapons as a means to deter the nuclear-armed North from future aggression. Currently, South Korea isn't allowed by its defense agreement with the U.S. to deploy precision-guided missiles with a range of more than 300 kilometers.

"We need to have our own ways to threaten North Korea," said Kim Tae-woo, a South Korean defense expert who sits on one of two committees President Lee has established to assess Seoul's military preparedness. "We need to have this dialogue with our allies."

Mr. Lee took office in 2008 calling for an overhaul of South Korea's military apparatus, which his party had charged was weakened during 10 years of liberal rule in Seoul. But South Korea's new government initially agreed with its predecessor's plans to shrink the size of Seoul's military ranks while reining in defense spending.

Many in South Korea have viewed North Korea's million-man military as largely targeted at the U.S. South Korea's late President Roh Moo-hyun successfully pushed for the U.S. to lower it military profile in his country and to transfer control of the joint-military command to South Korea's defense department.

The North's alleged attack March 26 on the South Korean naval vessel, the Cheonan, however, has shaken up Seoul's strategic thinking, according to South Korean and U.S. officials. A major concern here now is that Pyongyang's development of nuclear technologies has provided leader Kim Jong Il with a deterrent against the more-advanced militaries of the U.S. and South Korea. This, in turn, could allow Pyongyang to stage more-aggressive conventional attacks on the South, with the belief that Seoul won't retaliate for fear of an escalation.

This fear seems to have been borne out in recent days as Mr. Lee's government has shown a reluctance to take some new steps to challenge Pyongyang over the Cheonan incident. Seoul, for example, stepped back from an initial pledge to use loudspeakers to blast pro-South Korean propaganda across the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas after the North threatened to attack the broadcasting infrastructure.

South Korea's leaders also have publicly sought to play down the idea that the North's two recent nuclear tests have given it a military advantage or that it has succeeded in developing atomic weapons. "Regarding North Korea's nuclear capabilities, we have not been able to verify those capabilities," South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan said last week at a joint-news conference with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Still, many leading defense thinkers in Seoul said Pyongyang's growing nuclear technologies are "game changers" that now require South Korea to significantly upgrade its own capabilities. In addition to developing longer-range missiles, many are calling for the purchases of advanced new strike-fighters and antiballistic-missile batteries. They also are calling for the Pentagon to remain in charge of the joint-military command in South Korea beyond 2012, given the lethal effectiveness displayed by North Korea's mini-submarine fleet during the Choenan attack.

"There has been an asymmetrical shift that has weakened our deterrence structure," said Kim Byungki of Seoul's Korea University. "We are supposed to have air, ground and sea dominance."

South Korea's effort to renegotiate in the coming months its decades-old nuclear-cooperation agreement with the U.S. could now prove particularly tricky, according to current and former U.S. officials.

South Korea, under the 1974 pact, faces strict guidelines on its ability to store and reprocess the spent nuclear fuel produced by the country's 20 power reactors, because of fears it could be diverted for military purposes. The U.S. is seeking to limit any major alterations in the treaty, which expires in 2014, so as not to undermine Washington's efforts to contain the nuclear advances of countries like North Korea and Iran.

South Korean officials have said they are seeking to amend the agreement to in a bid to allow Seoul to better manage the storage of its nuclear waster. They are specifically citing South Korea's need to reprocess the spent fuel into a form that can be more easily disposed. But some analysts said Mr. Lee's government also could resist the constrictive terms being sought by the U.S. by citing the North's flouting of a 1992 agreement calling for the removal of all atomic weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

"This incident with the Cheonan could be the spark for turning around a number of things" between the U.S. and South Korea, said Victor Cha, who served as a senior White House official working on Asia during President George W. Bush's second term.