US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld proposed 2009 as the year for South Korea to assume wartime command of Korean forces, the South Korean Defence Ministry said Sunday prompting concern, according to dpa. The US proposal is considered a response to South Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's previously suggested 2012 as the start year to retain wartime operational control over its force. Roh said South Korea is the world's 11th economy that deserves military independence by taking back the wartime control of its troop which had been ceded to the US-led UN forces during the 1950-53 Korean War. Military experts, including a dozen former defence ministers, are balking at Roh's policy to dismantle US control over the combined US-SK force that they believe has been an effective deterrent to North Korea. "What we badly need is not to defeat North Korea, (if war breaks with North Korea), but to prevent the war in the first place. The combined US-SKorea control has been a powerful deterrent to North Korea. North Korea has tried to destroy it for the past five decades. North Korea would be very happy to see its fall," Kim Kyung-Won, former Korean ambassador in the US. The government in Seoul is trying to allay fears. "Our military power has grown up with more advanced and modernized military resources than North Korea," said Yoon Gwang-Woong, South Korea's defence minister.
