Can the United Nations Command Become a Catalyst for Change on the Korean Peninsula?
Recent unprecedented agreements between North Korea and South Korea have required the UNC to make a major shift in the role that it plays in the region.
On October 22, the United Nations Command convened a meeting at a three-sided table in the truce village of Panmumjom on the border that separates North Korea and South Korea. Sitting on one side was a three-member contingent from the UNC, led by U.S. Army Col. Burke Hamilton. To his right was Col. Cho Yang-guen of the Korean People’s Army of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and to his left, Col. Om Chang-nam of the Army of the Republic of Korea (ROK).
After a session that U.S. Forces Korea called “historic,” the UN Command announced that North and South Korea will withdraw firearms and guard posts at the Joint Security Area in the Demilitarized Zone, known as the DMZ, an operation that was completed on October 25. It was the latest effort by the two Koreas to implement the Comprehensive Military Agreement signed in September by Chairman Kim Jong-un and President Moon Jae-in at their third summit meeting in Pyongyang.
The trilateral meeting, explained Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the UNC’s U.S. Commander, “joined the existing Armistice mechanisms” used by the KPA and the UN Command with the “more recent” North and South Korean military dialogue triggered by the inter-Korean CMA. In a USFK press release, he said the three commands will be holding similar meetings in the “near future” on such topics as reducing security personnel and “adjusting surveillance equipment” along their 160-mile border.
A few days earlier, in an operation also observed by the UNC commander , the two Koreas removed dozens of landmines in one section of the DMZ. And on October 26, in a separate bilateral meeting in the northern part of Panmunjom, generals from North and South agreed to demolish twenty-two of the front-line guard posts along the DMZ. They declared that all hostilities and accidental clashes along the border would be banned starting on November 1. The demilitarization project was verified by the UN Command.
These actions represent a significant shift in the role of the UNC. Now that the Trump administration and South Korea appear intent on negotiating a disarmament deal with the DPRK and the two Koreas are moving forward on their plans to end the Korean War and create an environment for peace and reconciliation, the U.S.-run command appears to be shifting from being a tough enforcer of the armistice agreement that ended the fighting in 1953 to becoming almost an neutral arbitrator between North and South.
“We consider the UNC to be revitalized,” Canadian Lt. Gen. Wayne Eyre, the first non-U.S. general to serve as deputy commander of the UNC, recently declared in a remarkable and (as far as I know) unprecedented speech in Washington. “The Comprehensive Military Agreement is something we view as de-escalating tensions on the Korean Peninsula, and we’re working very hard as we speak to ensure its implementation.” The UNC “has a new life, new vitality and good forward movement,” he said at an October 5th event organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
As an example of the Command’s enhanced role in the peace process, Eyre disclosed that the UNC has approved the movement of 5,700 people through the DMZ this year, not including the 400 or so North and South Koreans who crossed the border during the Olympics. In contrast, there were zero approvals in 2017. Its role in cross-border dialogue with the DPRK has dramatically increased as well. In 2018, after a hiatus of several years, the UNC restarted its phone connections to North Korea’s KPA to “at least twice a day” and sometimes more, according to Eyre. Like the October 22 meeting, these include officers at the colonel level, but they also include general officer discussions for the first time since 2009.
These changes to the UNC have received little notice in the increasingly bitter disputes between the United States and the ROK over the pace of the inter-Korean peace and denuclearization process. But the UNC’s powers have captured the attention of some Koreans and Korea area experts. Last year, for example, a retired South Korean general proposed in the Washington publication 38 North that the UN Command had a “potential role” to play in the nuclear standoff, arguing that the command “could be utilized to provide international support, monitoring, supervision and oversight of North-South denuclearization arrangements.”
Over the summer, the possibility of shifting the UNC’s role to include easing tensions for both South Korea and the DPRK was broached in a report by five prominent experts on the Koreas, including four from the United States. The sweeping proposal, which was published by the Berkeley-based Nautilus Institute , was triggered in part by comments from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shortly after the Singapore summit that President Trump might agree to “alter” the armistice to accommodate the DPRK’s desire for security guarantees, and involved transforming the 1953 agreement into a partnership between a reorganized UNC and North and South Korea.
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Analysts proposed —presciently, in turns out—that an “amended” UN Command could engage with the militaries of South and North Korea on joint operations such as the management of mine clearing as well as military training and counterterrorism. “In short, treating the DPRK as a ‘security partner’ may serve American, allied, and regional security interests better than either ally or enemy,” the Nautilus paper, published on July 6, concluded. Among its authors were two former high-ranking U.S. diplomats, Thomas Pickering and Philip Yun.
At his October 5 talk, I asked General Eyre about the proposal. He replied that a shift in UNC responsibilities might be “conceivable” in the trust and verification stages of a denuclearization agreement. “Could the UNC fill the gap? Perhaps, yes,” he said. “But would it be palatable? Maybe not to all.” He suggested that his experience with the UN in Cyprus, where a UN Peacekeeping Force has been monitoring a ceasefire agreement between Greek and Turkish forces on the island, “could be a model.”
Unfortunately, General Eyre’s enthusiasm for an enhanced UNC role in Korea was obscured by a Reuters report on his remarks that focused entirely on the end-of-war declaration sought by the DPRK in its negotiations with the ROK and the United States. “Even if there is no legal basis” for such a declaration, General Eyre said, “emotionally people would start to question the presence and the continued existence of the United Nations Command. And it’s a slippery slope then to question the presence of U.S. forces on the peninsula.”
The quotes were accurate. But they also seemed a logical leap from his earlier remarks that the UNC is viewed with suspicion by some Koreans as well as by China, Russia and other UN members. He had also emphasized that the foreign-military presence in Korea can’t last forever. “Don’t get me wrong —at some point the [UN] command has to go away,” he said, after explaining how closely the UNC adheres to policies set by the Pentagon. “But it has to be at the right time.”
Because a declaration to end the war is different from an actual peace treaty, he continued, “the requirements to continue to have a mechanism to formally de-escalate incidents need to exist.” He pointed out that this difference was addressed by President Moon upon his return from Pyongyang in September, when he said that a declaration would “in no way” affect the status of the UNC.
The UN Command in Korea was created by the UN Security Council shortly after the North Korean invasion of the South in June 1950. Under UN Resolution 84 , the United States was authorized to form a unified UN Command that was eventually made up of seventeen “sending states” that included soldiers from the UK, Canada, Turkey, Belgium, the Philippines, France and Greece. It was easily adopted because, at the time, the Soviet Union was boycotting the council and could not employ its veto power. Second, China was represented by the anti-communist Nationalist government of Taiwan, which avidly supported the military intervention on the peninsula.
But of the total forces, 64 percent came from South Korea and 32 percent from the United States; only four percent came from the other nations. Moreover, the United States had veto power over any country that wished to join and under that authority excluded Taiwan, according to a former UNC officer and armistice expert I spoke to in Seoul (he was referred to me by U.S. Forces Korea, which did not want to comment). The U.S. commander of the UNC, then as now, answered directly to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon. “There were no Koreans in the chain of command,” the former UNC officer, who would only speak on background, reminded me. The armistice was signed by a U.S. general representing the UN Command and his equivalents from the DPRK and China.
A year later, the UN Command as a fighting force ended when the United States and South Korea signed a Mutual Defense Treaty. Under this treaty, signed in 1954, South Korea “voluntarily” placed its forces under the command of U.S. Forces Korea. Then, in 1978, the two countries created a Combined Forces Command , which has authority over all U.S. and South Korean forces and currently provides the primary defense of South Korea. Leadership of the CFC is shared by the two countries, but in times of war, operational control over both the USFK and the ROK Army is held by a U.S. general—currently General Brooks, who is simultaneously commander of the UNC.
Yet even though the command flies the UN flag, “there currently exists to relationship with UN Headquarters other than submitting an annual report,” General Eyre said in his October speech. Instead, it is entirely run by the Pentagon, with a line of command running from General Brooks to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. According to the Department of Defense, the chairman —a position currently held by General Joseph E. Dunford Jr.—is the principal military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense and the National Security Council.
At present, the primary function of the UNC is to oversee and enforce the armistice in the southern half of the Korean peninsula by monitoring the Military Demarcation Line that marks the aerial boundaries between the DPRK and the ROK over land and sea. As part of this responsibility, it also controls all movement across the border and through the DMZ (it's that authority that allowed the UNC toreview the inter-Korean military agreement). The UNC is also responsible for dialogue with the the militaries of North Korea and China.
The command is reinforced by a UNC Security Battalion, which patrols the Joint Security Area in Panmumjom, and a UNC Liaison Group, which is composed of defense attaches from the sending states (“It’s a lively group,” said General Eyre, adding that it meets with the UNC on a weekly basis). But the command’s most important —and least understood—component is the UNC Rear, which is based in Japan. Under its mandate, which is made possible through the U.S.-Japan Status of Forces Agreement, the UNC Rear would have the responsibility of facilitating U.S. and UNC mobilization to Korea in case of a second Korean War.
Over the past year, UNC Rear has been instrumental in organizing air and sea surveillance operations that monitor North Korea’s alleged evasion of the sanctions imposed by the UN Security Council. Those operations, which include Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Forces, have continued until the present. In September, even as the DPRK and the ROK were moving forward with their peace process, Australia and New Zealand joined the U.S. and Japan in maritime surveillance operations.
The UNC Rear, which is based at Yokota Air Base in Japan, includes seven American installations. They include the massive U.S. naval base at Yokosuka as well as Sasebo naval base in Kyushu and two of the most important U.S. bases in Okinawa, Kadena Air Base and Futenma Marine Corps Air Station , according to an official UNC Rear publication.
These bases, General Eyre said, that would “coordinate the sustainment of coalition warfare supporting the CFC and USFK” if hostilities were to break out in Korea. As tensions escalated last year over the DPRK’s nuclear and missile tests, the UNC and its sending states had “serious discussions” on potential actions that would have originated at these bases, he added. But the sudden change in atmosphere, triggered by Kim Jong-un’s declaration that he had completed his “nuclear force” in November 2017 and the peace talks that President Moon initiated during the Olympics, altered the UNC’s approach.
According to General Eyre, the U.S. commanders of the UNC began taking measure to “revitalize” the UN Command several years ago. One of their first steps, he said, was to increase the permanent staff of the command. It has also tried to increase the number of states contributing to the UNC, although Eyre did not say if any new nation has joined.
As part of that effort, in January the U.S. and Canada organized a conference of foreign ministers of foreign ministers from a dozen countries that fought in the Korean War in Vancouver to “demonstrate international solidarity” with the UNC’s efforts to curb the DPRK’s nuclear and missile program. In an unusual move, they also invited civil society groups, including Women Cross DMZ , which negotiated with the UNC to cross the border at Panmunjom in 2015, to address the meeting. Then, earlier this year, the UNC brought in General Eyre as deputy command, making him the first non-U.S. officer to hold a senior position at the command. “General Brooks told me to engage widely,” he said, because “this is a pivotal time in Northeast Asia.”
As the peace process moves forward, General Eyre concluded, the UNC will continue to evolve. The developments in Korea since last January’s thaw, he said, are “positive signs of potential epic breakthroughs” that underscore the “growing interest in the UNC.” And while admitting that the command carries “historical baggage” as a result of being a direct “party” to the Korean War, he predicted that its role could go beyond its current mission. “The UNC, and I’m just throwing it out there, could expand its functions to enable every greater dialogue for wider regional security issues,” Eyre said.
But he acknowledged that some UNC decisions have caused tensions with South Korea. Just weeks before his appearance in Washington, for example, the UN Command used its powers to control traffic through the DMZ to block South Korea from sending a train from Seoul to the northern city of Sinijiu on the Yalu River as part of a joint ROK-DPRK inspection of their railway infrastructure. But the disputewas quickly resolved , allowing the Koreas to resume their rail inspection project.
Eyre also seemed to distance himself from criticism of the inter-Korean military agreement, which some in Washington view as problematic for U.S. interests in Asia. Pointing to the no-fly zone that U.S. officials reportedly objected to, he said that “UN equities are not touched” with the exception of medical evacuations from the DMZ.
“The challenge is to respect [South Korea’s] sovereignty while fulfilling our legal responsibility as defined in the armistice agreement,” the Canadian general concluded. “That’s a very fine line. But at the end of the day, we should be a force for lasting peace.” In the wake of the sweeping military agreements by North and South to demilitarize their border, that approach is beginning to work. The events of October show that, with the right changes to the command and the continued involvement of both Koreas, the UNC offers some hope for resolving one of the most intractable conflicts of the last century.
Tim Shorrock is a Washington-based journalist who grew up in Japan and South Korea. He has been writing about the Koreas since the last 1970s, and is currently a correspondent for The Nation and Newstapa/Korea Center for Investigative Journalism.
Image: Reuters
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