The defeat of the Afghan government after the withdrawal of US forces has sparked debate over the strength of American commitments in places such as Taiwan and South Korea.

Since the 1950-1953 Korean War, the American military has retained authority to control hundreds of thousands of South Korean forces alongside the roughly 28,500 US troops in the country if another war breaks out.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has made obtaining "operational control," or OPCON, of those joint forces a major goal of his administration, but delays over the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues, appear to have made that impossible in its remaining term.

"We have to take the Afghanistan crisis as a chance to strengthen self-defense capability through OPCON transfer," Song Young-gil, a lawmaker who serves as chief of Moon's Democratic Party, said in the title of a Facebook posting.

Asked about the effect the US withdrawal from Afghanistan could have on the South Korea-US alliance, an official of the presidential Blue House said it was carefully monitoring and considering the Afghan crisis but did not elaborate.

In Washington, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told a briefing on Tuesday that President Joe Biden had no intent to withdraw troops from South Korea and Europe.

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