▲ This file photo, taken March 5, 2026, shows U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby speaking during a forum in Washington, D.C. (Yonhap)

By Song Sang-ho

WASHINGTON, Sept. 29 (Yonhap) -- The U.S. Department of Defense is using South Korea's efforts to retake wartime operational control (OPCON) from the United States as a chance to drive "generational" improvements in the Asian country's warfighting capability, a senior Pentagon official has said.

Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Elbridge Colby made the remarks in a statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee last Thursday, as South Korean President Lee Jae Myung's administration seeks to complete the conditions-based OPCON transition before its term ends in 2030.

"As the ROK accelerates efforts to assume wartime operational control over ROK forces, the Department is using this opportunity to incentivize generational improvements in ROK warfighting capability," Colby said in the statement. ROK stands for South Korea's official name, the Republic of Korea.

He also noted that the department is continuing to modernize the Seoul-Washington alliance, strengthening U.S. conventional posture in South Korea "against all regional threats," as Washington seeks to leverage its alliance network to bolster Indo-Pacific security in the face of an increasingly assertive China.

Commenting on "burden sharing" in the Indo-Pacific, Colby said that the Pentagon has made "significant progress," stressing that South Korea has become the first ally outside the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to adopt what it calls the "new global standard for defense spending -- 3.5 percent of gross domestic product on core military capabilities.

Moreover, he said that South Korea has agreed to take "primary" responsibility for its conventional defense against North Korea.

Colby submitted the statement in an update to the implementation of the Pentagon's national defense strategy released earlier this year.

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