Park Seon-won: 'We respect the alliance but will not yield on sovereignty'
Kim Byung-joo: 'Remarks inappropriate, I believe they reflect a personal view'
UNC: Statement 'not intended to address South Korea's sovereignty'
Gen. Xavier Brunson, commander of US Forces Korea, the United Nations Command and the Combined Forces Command, has sparked back-to-back controversy with remarks suggesting stricter conditions for the transfer of wartime operational control to South Korea, and a separate statement that South Korean territory begins at the southern fence of the Demilitarized Zone.
The UNC has moved to contain the fallout, but the Democratic Party of Korea — the ruling party — has kept up sharp criticism, demanding that Brunson retract his comments and apologize.
The UNC said Brunson's remarks at a Wednesday (local time) seminar hosted by the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a US think tank in Washington, D.C., were intended to "explain the responsibilities assigned to the UNC commander within the DMZ and the Joint Security Area under the Armistice Agreement," adding that "these responsibilities are military and administrative in nature."
The command also said the remarks "do not alter the sovereignty of the Republic of Korea" and "were not intended to address issues of South Korean sovereignty."
The UNC's clarification has done little to quiet the ruling party. Democratic Party Supreme Council member Park Seon-won said at a supreme council meeting Monday that "the territory of the Republic of Korea is defined in the Constitution," and called on Brunson to "correct the expression himself, explain it clearly to the Korean people, and apologize."
Park also addressed Brunson's earlier remarks on conditions for the operational control transfer, saying, "When we raise the issue of South Korean sovereignty, he turns around and says the criteria for the transfer should be set again." He added: "The principle is that South Korea takes responsibility for its own security. We respect the alliance, but we will not yield on sovereignty."
Rep. Kim Byung-joo of the Democratic Party, a former deputy commander of CFC, also appeared on YTN Radio on Monday and said the remarks were "highly inappropriate for a UNC commander," calling on Brunson to retract them and apologize.
However, Kim said he did not believe the remarks reflected Washington's position. On the operational control transfer, he said he understood that Defense Minister Kang Shin-chul would have an opportunity to meet with the US defense secretary around late October, and that "the two ministers need to have a top-down conversation at that point."
South Korea's Ministry of National Defense also reaffirmed its position, describing Brunson's remarks as "the personal view of the UNC commander" and saying the ministry's "stance on the territorial sovereignty of the Republic of Korea is firm."
Meanwhile, Rep. Jin Sung-joon, a Democratic Party lawmaker who chairs the National Assembly's National Defense Committee, said in a statement Friday that "the UNC commander's perception, which denies the territorial sovereignty of the Republic of Korea, must be corrected without fail."
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