President Roh Moo-hyun told U.S. Congress leaders in Washington last week the people who oppose Korea’s sole exercise of operational control of its forces are the very ones who asserted in the past that the U.S. Second Infantry Division must be deployed as a “trip-wire" along the armistice line. But he said it was wrong to employ the troops of a friendly country as a trip-wire. Koreans who rely on the U.S. too much by making that assertion by reaction created the forces who oppose the U.S., he claimed. And he pleaded with his audience to understand Korea’s attempt to “withdraw” operational troop control as a process “of overcoming such things." Difficult though it may be to believe, that is what our president said abroad; Cheong Wa Dae says so.

The Second Infantry Division has been deployed on the western front north of the Han River, the anticipated invasion route of the South by North Korean troops, since the 1953 armistice. With the U.S. troops at the front line, any attack by North Korea would immediately result in U.S. casualties, automatically triggering a powerful U.S. response, the theory went. Hence the term “trip-wire.” It is a fact that some Koreans did support that theory and opposed a move south by the USFK; it must also be true that many of them are opposed to our sole exercise of operational control.

But by crossing the i’s and dotting the t’s, our president goes in front of the U.S. congressional leaders and portrays the Koreans opposed to the handover as happy to sacrifice American lives for their safety. If veterans of our armed forces who fought shoulder to shoulder with U.S. troops heard the story, they would be dumbfounded. They protested in their ancient military uniforms against the redeployment of the USFK and demanded an end to negotiations on the troop control handover because they wish that our armed forces and U.S. troops will continue to safeguard freedom and democracy together till the end. Is the president saying that these men, the defense ministers and former Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine officers who shared the joys and sorrows of their American counterparts, object to the handover because they do not share his deep concern for U.S. troops?

At home, the president behaves as if we have to struggle to take over operational control from the U.S., claiming South Korea is “the only country in the world that does not exercise operational control of its own forces”; and he claims that sole exercise of operational control will do wonders for our independence. This is the same president who has berated government officials for being pro-American.

In recent years, some 700,000 Koreans have visited the U.S. on average every year, and 500,000 Americans have come here. There are no barriers between the two countries. What must Koreans and Americans feel when they hear the president say one thing here and quite another in the U.S. in a world of information without borders? On not a few occasions, the president's doubletalk and the dignity of his utterances have got him into trouble. And now again, he has divided the nation into them and us in front of foreigners with his hypocritical remarks. Koreans hang their heads in shame.