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Uri Party lawmaker Choi Jae-cheon has for a couple of days now been feeding the public classified documents on the controversy over greater strategic flexibility for the U.S. Forces Korea. On Thursday, he disclosed a National Security Council document concerning a 2004 discussion of the matter between the Foreign Ministry and the U.S.; On Wednesday he disclosed the minutes of a recent NSC meeting on the same issue. It was from Choi¡¯s homepage, too, that the public learned of Korea¡¯s decision to join the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative, not from an official announcement.
Yet when Grand National Party lawmakers disclosed diplomatic documents in the legislature in 2004, it was the same Choi who dragged them before the National Assembly's Ethics Committee for leaking state secrets. His own disclosure of such secrets, needless to say, he justifies for the sake of the people's right to know.
The fact that Choi has the documents to disclose means that someone in the NSC is leaking them to him, and that in turn suggests there are disgruntled NSC officials scheming to reverse the government¡¯s acquiescence to possible USFK deployment elsewhere by creating a media storm.
The president in March last year made his opposition to the plan clear, saying Korea cannot allow itself to become embroiled in a Northeast Asian conflict against its will, as it would be if U.S. troops stationed here intervene. But with the agreement reached on Jan. 19 this year, the chief executive in effect accepted that strategic flexibility is an operational strategy for all U.S. forces overseas and cannot simply be reversed on the strength of one ally¡¯s objection. The USFK, he knew, might have had no choice but to withdraw from the peninsula if Korea had held out against the plan to the end.
Having announced that he will always tell the U.S. what he wants, the president in the end had to accept the new strategy with gritted teeth. Yet some of his staff seem determined to undo that decision by leaking state secrets, and a ruling-party lawmaker proudly carries them before the press. How can the government have got into such a state?
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