Seoul: South Korea and the United States plan to hold their senior-level regular defense talks in Seoul next week, multiple sources said Tuesday, as the allies are facing a set of security issues, including Seoul’s push to retake wartime operational control (OPCON) and Washington’s call for greater “burden sharing.”

According to Yonhap News Agency, the biannual Korea-U.S. Integrated Defense Dialogue (KIDD) is set to take place on Tuesday and Wednesday. It will mark the second KIDD gathering under the second Trump administration following the previous one held at the Pentagon in early May. Acting Deputy Defense Minister for Policy Yoon Bong-hee is expected to lead the South Korean side, while John Noh, deputy U.S. assistant secretary of war for East Asia, will head the U.S. delegation.

Participants are likely to discuss a wide range of defense issues, including reinforcing deterrence against North Korea’s evolving nuclear and missile threats and the allies’ combined defense posture to respond to the shifting
regional security landscape. They could also discuss the Lee Jae Myung administration’s key policy task of achieving the transfer of wartime OPCON within its five-year term as well as bilateral cooperation in shipbuilding and other security areas.

South Korea handed over operational control of its forces to the U.S.-led U.N. Command during the 1950-53 Korean War. Control was then transferred to the allies’ Combined Forces Command when it was launched in 1978. Wartime operational control still remains in U.S. hands, while South Korea retook peacetime OPCON in 1994.

The KIDD meeting has been arranged as the Pentagon has been working on its new National Defense Strategy and a global force posture review that could affect its defense policy toward South Korea and its management of around 28,500 American troops on the Korean Peninsula. Launched in 2011, KIDD is a comprehensive senior-level defense meeting between the allies.