OPCON transfer backfires By Kim Tae-gyu Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, appears before the Senate Armed Services Committee for a hearing to consider his reappointment to the military’s highest post on Capitol Hill, Thursday. / AP-Yonhap South Korea’s request for another delay in the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) of its forces from the United States doesn’t fit its improved status, critics say. The way it is being handled raised eyebrows after a senior U.S. official confirmed there will be no change to the agreed transfer scheduled for December 2015 after the Ministry of National Defense (MND) inadvertently disclosed that it had requested a delay. Chang Yong-seok, a researcher at the Institute of Peace and Unification Studies affiliated with Seoul National University, said that a delay of the transition is against national interests. “There is no free lunch. I think that Washington will ask something from Seoul in return for putting off the transfer,” said Chang. “I don’t know why we have to defer the transition without a clear reason.” Another said that the delay was like turning the clock back. “It took 63 years after we surrendered the wartime OPCON to the U.S. in the midst of the Korean War. Back then, it was understandable because our military capacity was meager,” Peace Network chief Cheong Wook-sik said. “Now, our national defense budgets are twice North Korea’s national output. Why do you think that we cannot still regain our sovereign rights to control our forces in time of war?” He said that the OPCON transition is to “normalize what is abnormal,” which has been dubbed as the No. 1 mission of the Park Geun-hye administration that seemingly prefers postponement of the transfer. “Some take issue with the North’s nuclear ambitions but the topic has always been there. With such a mindset, we would not be able to take back the wartime OPCON forever,” Cheong said. “What is really problematic is not Pyongyang’s nuclear capability but their mantra of trying to overly depend on the U.S. They appear to think that our country is a satellite state of the U.S.” U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), expressed his support of the OPCON transfer as scheduled while hinting that South Korea fails to spend on the military. “From a military perspective, the timing of the transfer of wartime OPCON is appropriate,” he said in a recent interview with the Senate Armed Services Committee that held a hearing on the nomination of the general for his reappointment as JCS head. “After asking for the big favor of the U.S., can Korea opt for the Typhoon Eurofighter manufactured by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (EADS) as its next-generation fighter jets?” wondered a Seoul analyst who asked not to be named. “It may have to buy the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter from Lockheed Martin or Boeing’s F-15 Silent Eagle. Both are American products.” The three currently compete to win the 8.3 trillion won ($7.7 billion) F-X project bid to supply 60 advanced fighter jets. Kim Jong-dae, the editor of Defense 21 Plus, said that the nation’s military that requested the delay will draw ridicule from the international community. “The military will ask for more budgets to prepare for the OPCON transfer. When the deadline approaches, however, it may say again that our firepower is insufficient to ask for a further delay,” Kim said. “Without overhauling its mantra of relying on the U.S. too much, we cannot deal with this agenda issue in an appropriate manner.” Seoul signed the transfer of the wartime control in 2006, more than half a century after it was handed over to the U.S. soon after the Korean War (1950-53). It was supposed to take place in April 2012, but the former Lee Myung-bak administration postponed it by more than three years in 2010 After the South Korean frigate Cheonan was sunk by an unprovoked torpedo attack.