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Testimony on the future of the U.S. Forces Korea from their new commander Gen. Burwell Bell and the chief of U.S. Pacific Command Adm. William Fallon on Tuesday showed some worrying discrepancies with what we were told by our own Defense Ministry. Once again, all the signs are that the communication channels across the ocean have inexplicably dried up and no fine-tuning of divergent positions has even been attempted.
Gen. Bell testified that the United Nations Command, meaning control over the UN forces that nominally remain engaged in the Korean War, will be developed into a "standing multi-national alliance." Korea, by contrast, had been under the impression that the UNC would be either scrapped or seriously curtailed once the armistice that still officially prevails on the peninsula is being replaced with a peace treaty. "Since he is concurrently the UNC commander, Gen. Bell seems to have been talking about his personal ideas," Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung said. "I will ask him about the details when he comes back.¡± There can be no clearer indication that nothing about the UNC¡¯s future was discussed while Bell was here.
Then there was the question of a dock for nuclear-propelled aircraft carriers. Bell testified that a Korean Navy base to be completed in June includes such a dock, but Yoon rushed to point out that it had ¡°not been built with the U.S. in mind.¡±
Fallon also expressed hope for ¡°a substantial increase in tripartite military cooperation among the U.S., Japan and South Korea" after citing changes in the security environment including China's military modernization. That could be another headache for Seoul, which has made it clear it will not join the U.S. and Japan in encircling China.
In short, two U.S. Forces commanders testify before the U.S. Senate, and the Korean defense minister either disowns any knowledge of what they are talking about or denies it. That gives us the measure of the state the alliance has got into.
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