It is an undeniable historical fact that the South Korea-US alliance has underpinned peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula for more than 70 years, serving as a cornerstone of South Korea's prosperity and democratization. The deterrence provided by USFK and the combined defense framework remain a solid pillar of South Korea's security. The foundational agreement to pursue the transfer of wartime operational control — not on a unilateral timetable but on the basis of conditions — carries sound logic: to systematically verify the effectiveness of combined defense and the South Korean military's capacity to lead operations.
Yet as the recent national audit made clear, the atmosphere surrounding the OPCON verification process gives cause for deep concern. The controversy over so-called "moving goalposts" reached a peak when USFK Commander Gen. Xavier Brunson suggested at a Washington seminar that existing evaluation criteria should be revisited in light of North Korea's advancing nuclear capabilities and a changed security environment. Items previously assessed as fulfilled have been reversed, and the list of evaluation requirements has grown — with "changing circumstances" serving as a pretext to arbitrarily raise the bar and add new thresholds.
A clear line must be drawn between the off-the-cuff remarks of a field commander and official US government policy. If the accumulated national consensus built by the two countries' leaders can be shaken by a single soldier's words, the credibility of the alliance suffers lasting damage. Even more troubling is the way this atmosphere is feeding into what can only be called "security-anxiety marketing" by certain domestic forces. Stoking fear that an OPCON transfer would immediately create a security vacuum, casting doubt on the South Korean military's capabilities, and parroting only the hawkish line from the US military establishment — this is defeatist distrust of military sovereignty and a self-defeating act that undermines the nation's own negotiating leverage.
Behind the controversy lies America's sweeping Indo-Pacific hegemonic strategy. For a United States focused on checking China, the Korean Peninsula is more than a defensive line against North Korea — it is a strategic hub within the region. Once a future combined forces command led by a South Korean general takes shape, the operation of USFK would be strictly bound to its original purpose of defending the Korean Peninsula, and it is precisely this constraint that the United States is reluctant to accept. If the Cold War-era model of restricting an ally's military sovereignty in exchange for security guarantees is still at work, South Korea must make an unequivocal declaration of sovereign will: it will not be locked in as America's Northeast Asian forward base.
The military rationale behind endlessly expanding technical requirements also deserves hard scrutiny. South Korea's armed forces have already acquired a substantial volume of advanced US-made assets — F-35A stealth fighters, Global Hawk high-altitude reconnaissance drones, ballistic missile early-warning radars — and have demonstrated more than sufficient interoperability for combined operations. Yet demands continue for new platforms and additional force requirements, justified by the need to integrate AI-based systems such as Maven and apply new operational plans. One cannot help but wonder whether the alliance's security logic is being distorted into an endless purchase order driven by the commercial interests of the US defense industry.
The OPCON transfer cannot be left to languish indefinitely in a tug-of-war of working-level negotiations and elastic standards. The upcoming Security Consultative Meeting (SCM) is a decisive turning point at which this tangled knot must be cut.
On the basis of a strategic agreement between the two commanders-in-chief, the defense authorities must use the SCM to secure a firm political and strategic decision — one that definitively confirms and announces the completion of the OPCON transfer by 2028. This is not a repudiation of conditions-based OPCON transfer (COPT). The South Korean military's core leading capabilities have already been demonstrated through the first and second phases of verification. It is entirely reasonable to redefine the latest technology requirements arising from a rapidly changing battlefield environment — not as prerequisites for the transfer, but as joint capability-development tasks to be pursued by South Korea and the United States together under the future combined command after the transfer. In addition, if the future combined command's command agreement and operational plans firmly embed, as a matter of institutional commitment, the continued stationing of USFK and the US pledge to provide extended deterrence forces, much of the domestic security anxiety can be substantially addressed.
Of course, meticulous contingency planning must also be prepared, given the inherent variability of diplomatic and military negotiations. Should agreement on a single target year prove difficult, South Korea must secure as its negotiating floor at minimum a roadmap that specifies a target window of 2028 to 2029 and explicitly separates new technology requirements from preconditions. Only by nailing down a binding timetable that forecloses indefinite delay can further "goalpost-moving" by working-level officials be stopped.
The true strength of combined defense rests on a self-reliant foundation on which South Korea defends its own territory and sovereignty. The OPCON transfer is not a weakening of the alliance — it is a leap toward a mature partnership in which authority and responsibility are fully shared. This is not something to be deferred indefinitely under the shelter of the alliance. It is a generational task to be resolved with confidence, grounded in the constitutional authority of the commander-in-chief and in mutual trust between allies.
Seo Nam-yeol is chairman of the Korea Defense and Security Forum.
shindw@heraldcorp.com
