What is happening:

The U.S. Congress is beginning the long process of drafting the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2027; this is the bill that funds the Department of Defense (and the U.S. military by extension) and dictates a large chunk of U.S. defense policy. The process is starting this February as members of the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) and Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC) are fielding policy and budget requests from the public before they craft the first draft of the bill.  Our goal right now is to push these elected officials to include policy language in the bill that supports Korea peace.

Why the NDAA is important:

Past NDAAs have included policies that are harmful to peacebuilding and sovereignty in Korea.  The final version of the FY2026 NDAA included policy language blocking the reduction of the U.S. troop levels in South Korea and blocked the transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) of South Korea’s military from the U.S. to the R.O.K. government. While we will need to be engaged with the NDAA process well into autumn as Congress debates and amends the NDAA, acting now to influence the base text of the NDAA gives us more leverage and a better chance at harm reduction.

Additionally, the NDAA is a possible vehicle for advancing some of the Korea peace policies we have been pushing for. Since the NDAA is considered a must-pass bill by Congress (they have to fund the military, after all), it’s common for representatives to copy language from other defense/military-related bills into the NDAA as a provision or amendment in order to improve the policy’s chance of passing. For example, we could ask that the text of the Peace on the Korean Peninsula Act be inserted into the NDAA, or language about ending the U.S.-R.O.K war drills.

What can you do:

Write to your Members of Congress to insert the language, which you can view on the next page, and urge them to include this language in the draft.

Even if your representative or senator is not part of this step of the NDAA process, you can still write to them about policies you’d like to see included (or omitted) in the FY27 NDAA. Take action today.