Lee Sang-hee
Minister of National Defense |
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The military plans to use about 100,000 reserve troops to stabilize North Korean areas and conduct civil operations in the case of an emergency, a spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense said Tuesday.
The plan is part of the revised Defense Reform 2020 initiative announced last Friday, he said.
Under the revision aimed at streamlining the military structure and boosting defense readiness against North Korea, the Army plans to maintain 28 divisions in peacetime and add 10 more divisions of reserve troops in the event of war on the Korean Peninsula.
Each of these divisions would have about 10,000 members, the spokesman said on condition of anonymity.
``The reserve troops will mainly deal with civil operations, such as controlling North Koreans in captured areas and defeating North Korean guerillas,'' he said.
The plan of massive civil operations comes after South Korea watched the difficulties of U.S. troops in Iraq where they have faced an uphill battle against local insurgents for the past few years, he said.
In a related move, the Army is seeking to deploy more wheeled armored vehicles in the coming years to conduct more effective counteroffensive or stabilizing operations in the North in case of war, according to officials of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Under the revised defense reform plan, the total troop strength is to be reduced from the current 650,000 to 517,000 by 2020 in stages.
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