Troops pop out from an armored vehicle during a winter exercise by mechanized Army units in Yeoncheon, Gyeonggi Province, in this file photo taken in January, 2008. / Korea Times Photo by Shim Hyun-cheol |
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The military is seeking to shift its modernization focus from air and naval buildups aimed at regional threats to bolstering ground forces to thwart the lingering threat of North Korea's massive army, according to defense officials and analysts.
The shift, recently unveiled in a draft revision of the Defense Reform 2020, initiated in 2005, reflects the incumbent Lee Myung-bak administration's tougher policy toward the Stalinist North than that of its liberal predecessors over the past decade, they say.
The previous Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations, which advocated a ``sunshine'' policy of engaging the North, often downplayed threats posed by the North Korean military.
The liberal Roh government, in particular, persistently sought to build a ``self-reliant'' defense capability, emerging from the decades-long U.S. security umbrella, the rationale behind initiating Defense Reform 2020.
But the conservative Lee administration, inaugurated in February, views North Korea as one of its foremost enemies.
``Arms buildup plans under Defense Reform 2020 are expected to be readjusted to a realistic level in the coming years,'' No Hoon, a researcher at the Center for Military Planning of the state-funded Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA), told The Korea Times. ``That means the military will readjust its arms acquisition and restructuring schemes to properly deal with an imminent threat, namely, North Korea.''
To deter an invasion by North Korea's armed forces, maintaining stable Army strength in South Korea is crucial, said No.
The 2005 reform plan aims to make the South Korean armed forces ``slimmer but stronger'' and equip them with high-tech weapons systems. It calls for cutting troop levels by some 180,000, mostly ground troops, to 500,000 by 2020, in stages, and acquiring state-of-the-art weaponry to fill the possible security gap from the troop reductions. The South Korean military now maintains about 650,000 troops, down 40,000 from 2005.
The 15-year modernization plan, devised by former Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung, a retired vice admiral of the Navy, is also aimed at streamlining the Army-dominated military structure. Under the plan, the Army corps is to be reduced from 10 to six, and Army divisions cut from the current 47 to around 20.
Critics have said such large force cuts, unmatched by North Korea's 1.1-million member military, could result in a ``hollow'' defense against the North. Whether the required defense budget will be financed as scheduled or not is also in question.
Policy Shift
The Ministry of National Defense unveiled a draft revision of the defense reform on Nov. 24.
The revision stipulates the scale of troop reductions and the timeline for streamlining military units will be readjusted ``to deal with the North Korean army's threat.'' It also says acquiring deterrence capabilities against North Korea's military will precede coping with potential threats and conflicts in the region.
The phrases represent a shift in the goal of the defense reform. In the 2005 original version announced a year before Pyongyang conducted a nuclear test, the ministry said the defense reform was aimed at helping boost the country's independent defense posture ``amid expectations that the North Korean military threat would be decreased further.'' The military modernization was also focused on strengthening air and naval forces not to slip in the arms race in Northeast Asia, led by China and Japan.
``Final troop numbers by 2020 can be slightly altered around the 500,000-level in a flexible manner, but it's difficult to anticipate the exact numbers now,'' Kim Gyeong-deok, chief of the ministry's defense reform bureau, told reporters.
Kim said the revised version calls for acquiring required weapons systems prior to troop cuts and the streamlining of the military structure. He added his ministry will try to implement the cuts and use its defense budget as flexibly as possible to meet the target year, declining to specify budget projections in the future.
The budget scale for defense reform has been questioned. The reform package was originally estimated to cost 621 trillion won ($445 billion) based on the assumption that the country's gross domestic product (GDP) and government expenditures would grow in parallel at roughly 7.1 percent per year from 2006 to 2020.
In other words, the Roh administration anticipated the defense budget would grow by 9.9 percent a year from 2006 through 2010, then about 8.8 percent per year from 2011 through 2015, and then on average 1 percent per year from 2016 through 2020.
But the estimate has been proven incorrect. The GDP has not grown at the rates projected over the past two years, maintaining an average of 4 percent. Some defense analysts say the planned 621 trillion won defense budget will be short by 110 trillion won as a result.
On Dec. 13, the National Assembly approved a 28.5-trillion-won defense budget for next year. The figure represents a 7.1 percent increase from this year.
The ministry had earlier requested an 8.8 percent increase in the defense budget. With the budget cut-down, key defense acquisition and restructuring plans, such as the production of K-2 tanks and the establishment of a ground operations command, are expected to suffer.
What's Dropping?
KIDA researcher No expected ``priority changes'' regarding arms procurement programs.
``Future arms procurement programs are likely to be more focused on equipping the Army with advanced weapons systems within budget constraints, while slowing down its planned troop reductions,'' he said.
A case in point is Seoul's recent move to drop its bid to purchase U.S. Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles, he noted.
South Korea had sought to buy four Global Hawks by 2011 to bolster independent intelligence-gathering, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities for it planned a takeover of wartime operational control from the United States in 2012.
A senior official of the Ministry of National Defense confirmed the move, saying, ``The government now wants to invest more in defending against North Korea and taking advantage of U.S. military assets as much as possible to deter potential threats beyond the peninsula based on closer cooperation with the United States.''
Another military expert cautiously mentioned the Air Force's F-X fighter modernization program could be affected by Seoul's focus on the North Korean threat.
``The Boeing Company, which won both the first and second phase F-X programs for 60 aircraft, is expected to have another chance to compete in the next phase of the project, set to begin in 2011, since the Air Force recognizes Boeing's F-15K has more suitable performance meeting the service's operational requirements against North Korea than those of the F-35 of Lockheed Martin,'' the expert said on condition of anonymity.
Last year, the Seoul government decided to purchase stealth fighters in the next phases of the F-X program following reports that Japan was pushing to buy F-22 Raptors.
Some Air Force officials are skeptical of the potential purchase of the F-35, as the stealth fighter has high operational and maintenance costs over operational requirements on the peninsula, and ``capability trade-offs'' in range, payload, speed and other areas, he said.
Boeing says it wants to sell the F-15K NF III, an upgrade variant of the F-15K, to South Korea from 2013. Technological improvements of the NF III will include active electronically scanned array radar, missile warning, digital electronic warfare systems and newer weapons, according to company officials.
gallantjung@koreatimes.co.kr
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