The transition of wartime operational control (OPCON) from the United States to the South Korea (formally the Republic of Korea, or ROK) once again is a widespread topic of discussion and debate in Washington and Seoul. Although OPCON transition, in one form or another, has been an official alliance policy for two decades if not longer, its implementation has been fitful. A constellation of cross-cutting variables has shaped the policy process, at times propelling it forward and at others obstructing it. Successive U.S. and South Korean administrations have been inconsistent in how and to what extent they have prioritized OPCON transition, largely because of the cacophonous operation of the different variables.
Recent political transitions in Washington and Seoul brought into office policymakers eager to prioritize once more the policy of wartime OPCON transition, if driven by distinct and potentially clashing motivations. That U.S. and South Korean officials appear to have linked OPCON transition with a broader modernization of the alliance could be a positive development, especially considering that changes to the alliance’s military command architecture reflect – and will affect – core aspects of the relationship. Nonetheless, analysts and policymakers must consider the array of variables surrounding OPCON transition and the complex ways they have interacted in the past and very likely will in the future. Otherwise, they will produce poor analysis and potentially counterproductive or even destabilizing policy.
This series of articles explores each of the key variables that have shaped the policy process around OPCON transition and how they have aligned or clashed with one another to either advance or complicate – if not outright delay – the policy. The first two articles in the series will explore one of the more consequential if difficult to measure variables, namely the “control rod” logic (if you missed it, you can read part one of the series here). Subsequent articles will explore the South Korean “sovereignty narrative,” variations in alliance command concepts and structures, the conditions of the Condition-based Operational Control Transition Plan (COTP), how wartime OPCON transition relates to the regional role of U.S. forces and the alliance, and the role on the U.S.-led United Nations Command (UNC) in a post-OPCON transition environment.
The Control Rod Logic in the 2010s
When South Korean President Park Geun-hye entered office, she requested wartime OPCON transition be further delayed, much like her conservative predecessor. The Obama administration agreed. At the 2014 Security Consultative Meeting (SCM), the allies announced the adoption of a “ROK-proposed conditions-based approach” to OPCON transition from the U.S. forces-led Combined Forces Command (CFC) to a new ROK forces-led combined defense command. They reaffirmed their commitment to “a stable OPCON transition at an appropriate date,” while noting “that the conditions-based approach ensures that the ROK will assume wartime OPCON when critical ROK and Alliance military capabilities are secured and the security environment on the Korean Peninsula and in the region is conducive to a stable OPCON transition.”
The critical military capabilities cited in the 2014 statement included, among others, South Korea’s development of its Kill Chain preemptive strike system and Korea Air and Missile Defense System (KAMD), which South Korean defense officials said should be completed by 2023. Yet the latter condition about the security environment, broadly interpretive and political by design, provided a handy backstop in case either or both sides viewed the environment unfavorably.
In 2015, U.S. and South Korean authorities endorsed and signed the “Condition-based Operational Control (OPCON) Transition Plan” (COTP). In the fall of 2016 they pledged to continue implementing the plan to ensure a stable transition. It was apparent, however, neither side was rushing to complete the process. For her part, Park was outright opposed to the transition. However, she was soon engulfed in political scandal, impeached, and removed from office. Meanwhile, the Obama administration was reorienting U.S. foreign policy toward competition with China, while facing steadily increasing North Korean nuclear and missile tests. The imperative was to maintain, indeed reassert, U.S. leadership across the Asia-Pacific region, including in Northeast Asia.
Nevertheless, as has often occurred in the OPCON transition process, political leadership and policy soon shifted. After a decade of conservative rule, President Moon Jae-in entered office in 2017 with the intent to reestablish a progressive agenda, including promoting wartime OPCON transition based on the same sovereignty-based rationale President Roh Moo-hyun used in the 2000s, including withering criticism of South Korea’s military leaders for failing to advance the process.
From Progress to Roadblocks
Initially, Moon found in U.S. President Donald Trump – himself outspoken about the need for greater allied burden sharing – a seemingly willing partner. Trump and Moon’s first summit meeting and joint statement in June 2017 contained South Korean progressives’ favored language on continuing to work to “expeditiously” enable the conditions-based transfer of wartime OPCON. Both sides reaffirmed such language in successive SCMs.
In 2018, they signed the Alliance Guidance Principles, which aimed for a strong combined defense posture following OPCON transition, including by maintaining the CFC structure and reaffirming “the mutual commitment that the future CFC is to have an ROK four-star general as the Commander and a U.S. four-star general as Deputy Commander.” Both sides also established concrete steps by which to assess and certify South Korean and alliance capabilities and move forward with the transition process.
The sudden shift toward engagement with North Korea in early 2018 began to create an environment – or at least the perception of one – conducive to stable OPCON transition. If North Korea-U.S. and Inter-Korean relations evolved under some form of denuclearization, tension-reduction and trust-building measures, and, ultimately, political normalization, transforming the alliance’s longstanding security architecture seemed both realistic and necessary.
Yet the engagement itself – followed by the disruption of COVID-19 – again waylaid the wartime OPCON transition effort.
Following his historic Singapore Summit with Kim Jong Un in June 2018, Trump unilaterally cancelled South Korea-U.S. military exercises to help foster further engagement. However, exercises were the main mechanism by which to assess and certify that South Korean forces, alliance structures, and military interoperability were successfully progressing toward OPCON transition. Although the allies made some progress toward this certification under scaled-down exercises during 2019, the onset of COVID-19 further curtailed exercises. At the same time, the stalemate in both U.S. and South Korean engagement with Pyongyang and North Korea’s resumption of short-range missile tests resulted in discord between U.S. and South Korean officials.
Officials in Seoul continued pushing for expeditious assessment and certification of capabilities required for formal wartime OPCON transition. But U.S. officials resisted a perceived South Korean willingness to skirt agreed-upon certification standards, which, if not properly met, would undermine the alliance’s ability to deter and defend against future North Korean aggression. Also, U.S. defense officials questioned whether and to what degree South Korean capability acquisitions were properly calibrated to meet conditions.
During congressional hearings, U.S. lawmakers, too, raised skeptical questions about the pace of the wartime OPCON transition process as well as its outcome. As Representative Austin Scott put it, in the event of another war on the Korean Peninsula: “I expect that…the U.S. would in the end be the lead. We’re the ones that have the airpower. We’re the ones that have the command and control aspect of things. We’re the ones that have the weapons systems that it takes to win in that scenario. And to give operational control of that to another country’s commanders is… that timeline is very concerning.”
Again, if the U.S. were to maintain a forward presence in and treaty commitment to South Korea, U.S. policymakers, lawmakers, and officers were unwilling to accept subpar certification of a South Korean ally they viewed to be unprepared for leadership of U.S. forces and assets under wartime conditions. The control rod logic remained extant.
Moon administration officials, in turn, argued that the United States was using the certification debate to delay the process, and progressive voices began to push for a time-based approach. Trump officials did not budge.
Arriving in 2021, the Biden administration quickly tamped down any expectations the alliance would move forward with OPCON transition before the end of Moon’s term. Instead, the Biden team emphasized shoring up the alliance, by quickly inking a new cost-sharing deal with Seoul based on the latter’s own proposal (thus ending a dispute that had lingered for the last 18 months of Trump’s first term). The Biden administration also terminated all remaining range and payload restrictions on South Korean missiles under the alliance’s bilateral missile guidelines.
On OPCON, defense officials reaffirmed that bilaterally approved conditions must be met and committed to comprehensive joint study on capabilities and various rewrites to key COTP documents. In other words, OPCON transition was still official alliance policy but under a range of new reassessments and revisions, which would take time and require detailed deliberations and agreements. Simply put, wartime OPCON transition was kicked down the road again.
Bolstering Extended Deterrence, De-emphasizing OPCON Transition
Like past South Korean conservative presidents, while President Yoon Suk-yeol officially embraced OPCON transition when entering office in May 2022, he also had reservations. A security adviser to Yoon warned that “if a perfunctory transfer of wartime OPCON weakens or erodes the combined defense posture, the safety of the people will be threatened.” OPCON transition was de-emphasized in favor of a marked shift in Seoul’s policy toward North Korea and the alliance.
North Korea had undertaken a historical missile testing campaign and more bellicose rhetoric. Driven by a fundamentally different perspective on inter-Korean relations that stressed deterrence – if not confrontation – above all else, the Yoon administration prioritized expanding the scale and scope of alliance exercises, restarting existing and creating new alliance consultative mechanisms surrounding the U.S. extended deterrence commitment, and building out Seoul’s 3K Defense Systems under South Korea’s soon-to-be established strategic command (ROK STRATCOM). All the while, Yoon publicly played footsie with the possibility of Seoul’s own nuclear armament to garner an increased U.S. extended deterrence commitment.
Under the 2023 Washington Declaration and establishment of the Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG), the Biden administration ultimately embraced the creation of what Yoon and his administration’s officials called a “nuclear-based” alliance. When it came to the peninsula, the Biden administration’s priorities centered on enhancing deterrence while shoring up nonproliferation imperatives (at least as it pertained to half of the peninsula).
The Biden administration’s Korean Peninsula policy was nested within a broader, more important effort, namely, to strengthen the United States’ network of allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific in competition with the “pacing challenge” in China. The Biden team jettisoned Trump’s outspoken critique of allied free-riding and large cost-sharing demands yet retained his administration’s great power competition framework vis-à-vis China. Tightening or establishing upgraded alliance frameworks, like the NCG with South Korea, was considered a means to gaining greater allied fidelity to U.S. strategic imperatives in the Indo-Pacific and under such conditions, OPCON transition was not a priority.
That said, the 2022, 2023, and 2024 annual SCM Joint Communiques during the Biden administration began to offer more details about the status of the wartime OPCON transition process. These indicated progress was being made, yet also stressed more assessments and certifications were required. Notwithstanding the importance of the detailed certification process, one cannot discount the persistent role of the control rod logic.
After all, before ROK STRATCOM was even established, U.S. officials secured Yoon’s affirmation in the Washington Declaration that South Korea would work “in lockstep with the United States to closely connect the capabilities and planning activities of the new ROK Strategic Command and the U.S.-ROK Combined Forces Command.” There were then and remain today real questions and concerns about how and to what extent ROK STRATCOM – and its considerable offensive and defensive capabilities – fits with the existing CFC structure, even more so given Yoon and his administration officials’ heated rhetoric about adopting a disproportionate retaliatory posture against North Korea, within a broader preemptive deterrence framework.
If those concerns exist under the current U.S.-led CFC, might they become more prevalent under a South Korean-led CFC or, indeed, under a parallel arrangement wherein the U.S. may have even relatively less insight on and influence over South Korea’s actions? And how do reports that Yoon ordered drone operations in North Korea to spark North Korean aggression to justify imposing martial law influence U.S. concerns about precipitous or escalatory South Korean actions? While Yoon is disgraced and his actions have been widely condemned, there is no guarantee South Korea will not elect a future conservative president similarly inclined toward North Korea.
Moving Forward From the Present Moment
Presently, the administration of Lee Jae-myung, in office since June 4, embodies the opposite inclination. It aims to tamp down tensions and find a way back toward engagement with Pyongyang, as difficult as that will be.
Moreover, while neither the Trump administration as a whole nor the Pentagon specifically has adopted an official position to accelerate wartime OPCON transition, it has emphasized recalibration of the U.S. force posture and regional alliances to prioritize deterring China as the pacing threat and to deny Beijing’s seizure of Taiwan by force as its major planning scenario. In early 2025, the second Trump administration appears less inclined toward the control rod logic within the alliance command structure and more interested in greater regional and strategic flexibility. The second Trump administration appears to prefer Seoul pay more for its own defense and take a more robust role in safeguarding itself.
Yet, as history shows, the control rod logic has a way of resurfacing in both subtle and overt ways. As demonstrated over more than 80 years, the U.S. simply may find it unacceptable to subordinate – or appear to subordinate itself – to another country’s military leadership. Even if the current conditions-based wartime OPCON transition plan results in what is in effect the same combined structure – yet with a South Korean commander and U.S. deputy commander – the optics might not work for a global great power in general or under the framework of an “America First” foreign policy as that evolves in the new Trump administration. Alternatively, the implications of adopting a parallel wartime OPCON structure – akin to what was envisioned under the earlier Strategic Transition Plan – raises other issues, to be explored in a later article in this series.
Congress has already weighed in on the issue in the Senate’s version of the 2026 Fiscal Year National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which “prohibits a reduction in U.S. military posture on the Korean Peninsula or a change in wartime operational control over the Combined Forces Command until the Secretary of Defense certifies to Congress that such action is in the national interest.” Further, it “directs the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and the Commanders of Indo-Pacific Command and U.S. Forces Korea to conduct an independent risk assessment of any such changes.” Various constituencies may yet again find reason to inject caution into the process.
As it has for decades, the South Korea-U.S. alliance must grapple with the inherently contradictory distortions of the control rod logic. Premised on maintaining a degree of U.S. control or significant influence over the security environment on the Korean peninsula, the control rod logic can result in U.S. efforts to slow the OPCON transition process as well as reinforce Seoul’s sense of security dependence. Indeed, some within the South Korean security establishment fear OPCON transition, because it would result in a command arrangement over which the U.S. has less control and thus could precipitate a complete U.S. military withdrawal.
This could potentially catalyze antithetical South Korean trajectories, ranging from an open and eager pursuit of an independent nuclear deterrent to accommodation with China and disavowal of the U.S. alliance system. The wide possibilities of such discordant trajectories indicate the cacophony of psychologies burbling just under the surface. This, consequently, has shaped Seoul’s efforts to delay or downgrade the OPCON transition effort, which then amplifies U.S. frustrations about South Korean free-riding or lack of burden sharing while at the same time rendering U.S. officials unaware of the role that hierarchical American security tendencies play in fostering obstructionist South Korean behavior.
The control rod logic and U.S.-led command architecture preferences continue to play a role in an array of perverse incentives, including a South Korean preference for deterrence of North Korea by punishment or preemption rather than denial. Especially under conservative leadership, control rod logic may amplify Seoul’s strategic preferences to threaten severe retaliation, while being secure in its knowledge that the United Stares is there to support it and likely restrain any escalatory cycle. Posturing for disproportionate retaliation, while simultaneously bemoaning U.S.-imposed restraints, lets South Korean administrations look tough yet avoid confronting the high costs likely in the event of a spiraling armed conflict.
North Korea, shrewd as it is, surely understands this dynamic and perceives a degree of permissive space within which it can aggress without facing overly punitive retaliatory measures from South Korea. Pyongyang gets the added benefit of calling Seoul a U.S. lackey. While some argue wartime OPCON transition will result in greater North Korean adventurousness, might it have the opposite effect? Might it simultaneously inject a considerable confounding variable in North Korea’s calculus as well as force Seoul to grapple more immediately with what it means to deter and lead a war?
Moving forward in earnest with wartime OPCON transition ultimately requires moving past these seemingly endless debates about all-or-nothing military control. South Korea’s advancing military capabilities and the Lee administration’s more tempered approach toward North Korea and desire to take a more robust role in paying for South Korean security provides an opportunity.
The problem with the longstanding control rod logic is that it reflects dichotomous narratives, one of complete U.S. control and another of complete South Korean autonomy and subsequent U.S. security abandonment. Yet the U.S. has never had complete control, and wartime OPCON transition is not or should not be premised upon alliance abrogation or total ROK autonomy. With wartime OPCON transition, Seoul would undoubtedly have to reconceptualize its understanding of and practical approach to deterrence in uncomfortable and uncertain ways, but that would not be done without a U.S. presence. Moving forward, South Korean and U.S. policymakers could reinforce that message.
To be sure, when it comes to wartime OPCON transition, there are a host of other issues aside from the control rod logic that will have to be openly addressed to competently and stably move forward. These include contested and distortive narratives about South Korean sovereignty, the pros and cons of different command structures and concepts, reviewing and potentially revising the bilaterally agreed upon conditions for OPCON transition, determining how OPCON transition relates to the shifting regional role of U.S, forces and the alliance itself, and determining the role of the UNC in a post-OPCON environment (all of which will be examined in this series). Still, the control rod logic must be acknowledged and tempered if that alliance is to complete OPCON transition in a mutually beneficial manner.