Gwangju International Center

SPEAKER: Jonathan Chiarella
CO-WRITERS:​ Beomjin

GIC TALK DATE: January 16, 2016

GIC TALK TITLE: U.S. Control of ROK Forces

Everyone knows that there is a special relationship between Korea and U.S.A. Today’s speaker Jonathan Chiarella gave a speech about U.S. Control of ROK Forces. 

Firstly, he introduced what is OPCON which stands for Operational Control of Military Forces. Then, he talked about war-time OPCON Deal. According to Jonathan, Korea would have been able to  control their forces military in 2012, but that was delayed by 3 Reasons. First, the Emerging Threats. Second, Korea was not ready for it. And lastly, because of a need for missile defense. 

Based on his prediction about OPCON, he supposed that Korea will be able to control its own military forces by 2020. He finally tackled Missile Defense and stated that the USA really wish to have it. 

His content was based on political and historical issues. It was a quite difficult and controversial topic which raised a lot of questions from the audience and was followed by lots of conversations after his speech. 

From Jonathan's speech, we could think about Korea’s military conditions, which is a topic that people don't always think about. Let’s see whether his prediction will come true or not.