War Time Control Hand Over Will Not Be Renegotiated

The Korean government best get ready because the war time control hand over appears is going to happen sooner rather than later, even if a new more US friendly president is elected next year:

A U.S. defense department official said Tuesday the Security Consultative Meeting in Washington next month will decide the definitive timetable for a handover of wartime operational control of Korean troops to Seoul. The official said dialogue about the handover, which is proceeding in an equivocal and imprecise manner, is not what the Korean people would want. Korea wants to regain troop control in 2012, while the U.S. is hoping for a 2009 turnover.

On comments from some leading hopefuls for the next Korean presidency that they will renegotiate the handover if elected, the official said they sounded as if the U.S. had absolutely no say in the matter. He added once something is decided it cannot easily be reversed or altered, so there would be no renegotiations.

The official said no matter who is the president of Korea, the reason why the U.S. is moving forward with the plans is because it deems it the proper move. On U.S. reinforcements in the event of a crisis on the peninsula, the official said Combined Forces Command has plans to tackle such an event but in the future, the structure will not necessarily include a guarantee of such a deployment in the form of a document or the like.