The U.S. alliance with South Korea is going global.
Officials from both countries found reasons to say bilateral ties are stronger than ever after a series of meetings in Washington this week.
South Korea, nervous about an increasingly unpredictable and capable threat from the nuclear-armed North, convinced the United States to keep responsibility for wartime control of both countries’ military forces until South Korean forces are beefed up to handle the threat.
The United States secured pledges from Seoul to help fight the Ebola virus in West Africa and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in the Middle East. Secretary of State John Kerry said South Korea is sending additional healthcare experts to West Africa and will contribute an additional $4 million in humanitarian assistance to Iraq.
The six-decade-old alliance “is the linchpin of security, stability and prosperity in northeast Asia and increasingly beyond there,” Kerry said Friday. “The Republic of Korea has emerged as a key global player dedicated, as the United States is, to universal values like human rights, democracy and the rule of law.”
“It is the strongest alliance in the world as well,” added South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se at a joint news conference.
The alliance was set to enter a new phase by the end of 2015, with South Korea taking command of forces on the peninsula in wartime. Though the 640,000-strong South Korean military has been under local control for 20 years, the alliance agreement calls for the U.S. to take overall command if hostilities break out. There are about 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea.
The two Koreas remain technically at war, separated by a 2.5-mile-wide demilitarized zone set up by the 1953 truce that ended active hostilities. The growing threat from North Korea prompted South Korean President Park Geun-hye and President Obama to agree in April that the handoff would not occur until after South Korea’s military is more capable of meeting it.
Though the decision is likely to cause political problems both in Seoul, where leftists resent what they see as U.S. interference in Korean affairs, and in Washington, where budget hawks want an increasingly rich South Korea to take over its own defense, recent events raised the urgency for a deal, which the two sides announced Thursday.
It’s not just the nuclear threat from the North, which Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of U.S. forces in Korea said may include the capability to combine a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile with a mobile launcher, though U.S. officials have not seen a test of such a system.
“In recent years, North Korea has focused on development of asymmetric capabilities,” he told Pentagon reporters Friday. “These capabilities include several hundred ballistic missiles, one of the world’s largest chemical weapons stockpiles, a biological weapons research program and the world’s largest special operations force, as well as an active cyber-warfare capability.”
Tensions spiked last month when North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, 32, vanished from public view for 40 days, sparking rumors that he had become incapacitated by illness or injury or had been ousted in a coup.
Scaparrotti said U.S. officials believe Kim’s disappearance was related to a health issue, but he is “clearly in control of the country” and has resumed his regular routines. However, he noted that although North Korea’s hostile rhetoric has toned down, the provocations are increasing.
“In recent months, North Korea has shown very unique behaviors,” Yun said. “On the one hand, it is using continuous aggression, but on the other hand, they’re looking for dialogue.”
