US President Donald Trump\u2019s abrupt move to scale back annual military drills with South Korea has handed President Lee Jae Myung a fresh impetus for greater defence self-reliance even as he seeks to maintain the long-standing alliance.<\/p>\n
Lee on Tuesday called for accelerated efforts to regain wartime operational control (OPCON) of South Korean forces from the United States and build nuclear-powered submarines, casting both as part of a broader push to boost South Korea\u2019s ability to defend itself.<\/p>\n
His comments reflect Seoul\u2019s growing concern over uncertainty in its alliance with the US under an \u201cunpredictable\u201d president, according to analysts.<\/p>\n
\u201cIronically, President Trump\u2019s unpredictability allows President Lee to move with greater strategic flexibility,\u201d said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Korea, like many other friends, has been whipsawed by President Trump, and this is another example of his capriciousness. But this gives President Lee all the more justification to push a greater self-reliance agenda,\u201d Chang said.<\/p>\n
At a government cabinet meeting on Tuesday, Lee highlighted South Korea\u2019s growing defence capabilities.<\/p>\n
\u201cSouth Korea is ranked among the world\u2019s top five military powers and is considered one of the world\u2019s top four defence industry powers,\u201d Lee said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"US President Donald Trump\u2019s abrupt move to scale back annual military drills with South Korea has handed President…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[136,134,74,15230,114,141,31,5280,146,34,53648,112,303,33,444,1257],"class_list":["post-123992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-south-korea","tag-beijing","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","tag-hanoi","tag-iran","tag-kim-jong-un","tag-korea","tag-korean-peninsula","tag-lee-jae-myung","tag-north-korea","tag-panmunjom","tag-seoul","tag-singapore","tag-south-korea","tag-united-states","tag-wang-yi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/korea\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}