By Zachary Keck
Military officials from South Korea and U.S. have agreed to retain and expand the Combined Forces Command (CFC) after Washington hands over wartime operational control to an ROK general in 2015, Seoul-based The Chosun Ilbo reported on Tuesday.
ROK Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin was expected to brief President Park Geun-Hye on the plan— which will be formalized during bilateral defense consultations in October— earlier in the week.
Earlier the two militaries had anticipated dissolving the CFC once wartime operational control was assumed by the ROK military. This week’s report said the two militaries now intend to transform the CFC “into a bigger joint command structure to strengthen cooperation,” after 2015, without providing any details on what that entailed.
It might include expanding areas of cooperation to new forms of warfare like cyber. Earlier this week South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense announced that it intended to bolster the country’s cyber defenses following a cyber attack on its largest financial institutions to media outlets last month. The MOD outlined a plan for doing so that included creating a new department to handle cyber deterrence policy, as well as stepping up cooperation with the U.S. on cyber security issues.
One sticking point in retaining the CFC will be determining if the most senior U.S. officer assigned to Korea will fall under the command of the ROK general heading the CFC.
The U.S. and South Korea had initially planned to transfer operational control of the CFC over to ROK forces in April 2012. Following provocations from the North in 2010, the two nations decided to push back that date to December 2015.
Read the full story at The Diplomat