Seoul Should Be Ready for Future Crises

The National Defense Committee of the National Assembly (Chairman: ruling Uri Party lawmaker Yoo Jay-Kun) pointed out yesterday that Seoul should prepare for any emergencies in Pyongyang on the judgment that even if the North Korean nuclear issue is resolved through an agreement at the six-party talks, it will not lead to a peace accord on the Korean peninsula through its report related to North Korea.

In a National Defense Committee report titled, “The measures to control crisis in preparation for any emergency in the North,” exclusively obtained by Dong-A Ilbo yesterday, the committee insisted that South Korea needs to prepare for any emergencies including the possible event of North Korea’s state of emergency triggering a crisis in South Korea’s security and the breakup of alliance between Seoul and Washington.

In the report, the committee took issue with the “Measures for Unification I, II” which were reportedly drawn up by the South Korean government in the late 1990s in preparation for the North’s internal war and mass North Korean defectors, saying that the measures were based on the judgment that Seoul can control those possible emergencies, even if a state of emergency occurs in Pyongyang, but reality could be a far cry away.

The committee also said that Seoul could have so far dealt with Pyongyang’s emergencies thanks to the firm alliance between Seoul and Washington, but given the current situation in which it could be impossible for South Korea and the U.S. to jointly cope with possible emergencies due to the recent internal controversy over ideologies and rifts between South Korea and the U.S., the measures for unification should go into the melting pot.

The report explained that serious ideological discord in South Korea could be the biggest stumbling block in countering the North’s state of emergency, calling the dispute between conservatives and reformists over controversial Professor Kang Jeong-gu an internal war without guns.

Regarding the issue of handover of wartime operational control, the report pointed out that Seoul should not be in a hurry, and that although the incumbent government has tried to retrieve it in terms of very abstract and political aims under the banner of cooperative independent defense and dismantling the Cold War structure on the Korean peninsula, it is a very important issue capable of overthrowing the security system on the Korean peninsula on the part of the North.

taewon_ha@donga.com