Na Kyung-won blasts Lee's 'world's 5th-strongest military' claim as 'treasonous'

People Power Party lawmaker Na Kyung-won on Tuesday sharply criticized President Lee Jae Myung's claim that South Korea's military ranks fifth in the world and that the country has more than enough capability to defend itself, calling the remarks "outrageous" and "treasonous."

In a Facebook post, Na said the president's comments left her "utterly dumbfounded."

"It is basic common sense in security affairs that no matter how strong a country's conventional military might be, it cannot even be compared with a nuclear-armed state," she said. "The fact that President Lee knows this and still makes such remarks makes them look not like bluster but like treason."

Na then warned Lee not to "invite accusations of being a president who sides with pro-North Korean forces and defers to Pyongyang over the national interest," adding that "a security collapse will ultimately lead to an economic collapse."

She also called on the president to "abandon the reckless push for a hasty transfer of wartime operational control based on fiction" and to instead "devote all efforts to closer South Korea-US cooperation and securing deterrence against North Korea so that the conditions for the transfer can be genuinely met — for that is the only true way to protect the Republic of Korea and its people."

President Lee made the remarks Tuesday at a Cabinet meeting held in conjunction with the Ulchi Freedom Shield combined exercise with the United States. He said South Korea is rated the world's fifth-strongest military and ranks among the global top four in defense industry capability. He added that its defense spending is 1.4 times North Korea's GDP, which he described as a true measure of the North's actual national capacity.

Lee said South Korea's weapons systems and force size place it "among the top few in the world in terms of the ability to defend ourselves," adding that it would be "no exaggeration to say we have more than enough."

Na also turned her fire on the Lee administration's plan to reclaim wartime operational control within its term in office. "It has long been a firm principle between South Korea and the United States that the transfer of operational control must be conditioned on the achievement of specific military conditions," she said. "Have those conditions been met? Absolutely not."

Na recalled that USFK Commander Gen. Xavier Brunson had previously cautioned that political convenience must not get ahead of the conditions for the transfer. "At a time when the Lee administration's repeated missteps are already fraying the South Korea-US alliance and eroding our security, declaring that operational control will be reclaimed within this presidential term is like pouring oil on a burning house," she said.

shindw@heraldcorp.com