Bold Action, Followed by Careful Planning, Ensures Success

President Lee Myung-bak commented on defense reform three times this month alone, demonstrating his determination to overhaul this inefficient ― and ignominious ― administrative area.

``The current structure of defense administration fundamentally allows opportunities for irregularities,'' the commander-in-chief said at a recent Cabinet meeting. ``There must be ways to enhance efficiency while cutting down on costs.''

President Lee aims to apply the civilian sector's managerial principle of maximum output from minimum input to the opaque and wasteful arms procurement process and other defense operations. This is an idea well becoming a CEO-turned-president, who seems to have finally found a task that best fits his experience and know-how.

It came as little surprise then that the President has appointed civilians to three key posts at national defense ― vice defense minister, chief of the ministry's defense reform bureau and chairman of a committee for advancing defense administration. Lee was right when he noted that corruption and inefficiency in defense sector was due to national division and the longstanding monopoly of this job by the military.

True, Korea's modern history, marked by long occupation by militarist colonizers, dictatorship by generals-turned-presidents and a prolonged state of war ― at least technically ― with North Korea, has turned this country into a military-oriented society. The defense ministry, therefore, has habitually made budget requests way beyond the average increase in government spending, and worse yet, it has spent, more often than not, taxpayers' money neither transparently nor effectively.

Defense officials should not complain about the 2010 defense budget, which was slashed to half of their requested increase, but use it as an opportunity to break away from their chronic wasteful operations. It's a crucial step toward recovering the people's respect and trust of the military, a prerequisite for a genuinely strong army.

The civilian reform trio faces a difficult task ahead. Their performance will decide whether Korea will be able to move toward an era of national defense under civilian control. If the successful experiences of some advanced countries are any guide, the team should focus on arms supplies while leaving the organization and operation of the military to the generals, conduct thorough analysis and consulting, and most of all, be bold reformers with the strong support of the President.

That most civilian presidents have attempted but failed to reform the defense sector points to the difficulties of this task, as the sector is always exposed to powerful defense industry lobbyists both at home and abroad with the backing of national security hawks.

Noteworthy in this regard was President Lee's address on Aug. 15 in which he called for North Korea to work together to simultaneously reduce conventional weapons on both sides of the border. We hope the President's proposal was not just an inter-Korean one-upmanship or a tactic to keep the ever-greedy defense officials in check but a sincere initiative to reap peace dividends on the Korean Peninsula, which remains the last remnant of the Cold War.

Pyongyang is not likely to accept the proposal anytime soon, as the key military advantage of the impoverished country lies in worn-out arms plus a couple of hypothetical atomic bombs. Nonetheless, this should not mar the significance of the olive branch from the South's hard-line leader. The time has long past for this peninsula to take the world's mostly heavily-fortified belt off its waist.