The South Korean and U.S. defense chiefs in October gave the green light to strategic guidelines known as Concept of Operations Plan 5029, which include outlines for a joint response to sudden changes in North Korea. This will allow the two armies to cooperate in giving concrete shape to the plan, devised during the Kim Dae-jung administration in 1999, and ensure they are ready to deal with North Korea's weapons of mass destruction.

A government source on Thursday said then-defense minister Yoon Kwang-ung and U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld signed off on the strategic guidelines in October. "Under the strategy, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command will complete CONPLAN 5029 by the end of next year," the source added. The plan has been controversial between the two nations. North Korea, Seoul fears, will be particularly sensitive about the plan, which prepares for contingencies such as a sudden crisis in North Korea as the Stalinist country suffers tighter international sanctions over its nuclear test. Details of the guidelines have not been released, but they reportedly include ways of handling a seizure of North Korean WMD by hypothetical rebel insurgents and their attempt to take them out of the country, and a mass exodus of North Korean refugees.

Since 2003, the two allies were working on a fully fledged Operation Plan (OPLAN) 5029-05, which was to include the issues now to be tackled in the CONPLAN, but early last year the plan was scrapped due to concerns by the National Security Council that it could violate South Korea's sovereignty. An operational plan differs from a concept plan in that it includes concrete plans for military action including troop mobilization. As a result, the two allies agreed to revamp CONPLAN 5029 to include more detail rather than expand it into an operational plan.