As North Korea works through the succession that they are ongoing now, as North tries to become, as Kim Jong-il has claimed, to be a great and powerful nation in 2012, I do worry that there are additional attacks and provocations that are being considered within North Korea," Sharp said at a U.S. House Armed Services Committee hearing. "If deterrent force against the North does not operates, we need to establish measures to deal with [the North's attacks]."
He also stressed that both South Korea and U.S. are jointly working hard together to be strongly prepared for any possible attacks by the North.
"I think Kim Jong-il focuses on regime survival under any terms and counts on his continued development of nuclear capability and these provocative acts in order to be able to have his regime survive," he said.
However, Sharp did not make further details under what Kim's situation the top commander of U.S. Forces Korea made such statement.
Sharp also said that North Korea and Iran are making nuclear exchanges as he is going to report on such matter through secret report.
He believed that even though Seoul would strongly cope with Pyongyang's additional attacks, tensions on the Korean Peninsula would not be escalated to a situation that is unnecessary and uncontrollable.
Related to the transfer of wartime operational control from U.S. to South Korea scheduled in 2015, he stressed that maintaining 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea is reasonable.
In addition, Sharp explained about possible missile threats by the North and the South is making additional purchase on radar and command control system for the Patriot missile.
The top commander of U.S. Forces Korea said Pyongyang is continuously strengthening its asymmetric power and Global Positioning System disturbance is one example.
He confirmed at the hearing that North Korea was responsible for a recent distributed denial-of-service attack that crippled Web sites run by South Korean government and private businesses.
RoK MoD