By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The target year for the nation's 15-year military modernization program is expected to be readjusted due to budget shortfalls and delayed force improvement plans, a report said Sunday.
Quoting an unidentified government source, Yonhap News Agency said the target year for Defense Reform 2020, unveiled in 2005, would likely be changed to 2025.
``While the Ministry of National Defense has been reviewing the reform plan, the government believes Defense Reform 2020 is likely to fail to get sustainable financial support,'' the source was quoted by Yonhap as saying. ``In that context, there is a consensus in military circles that the timeline should be extended by about five years.''
The source anticipated a further decrease in defense expenditures down the road, citing a recent announcement by the government to reduce its growth forecast for this year to below 5 percent due to the global slowdown and soaring oil prices.
The ministry said in a statement, however, there has been no fixed plan yet about readjusting the timeline for Defense Reform 2020.
``The ministry is reviewing all options on the table regarding the military reform plan based on the principle of `force improvements before streamlining the military,' but we don't have any plan yet to delay the target year to 2025,'' it said.
The statement said the ministry plans to announce the results of the first review of the reform plan by October.
The plan was pushed by the previous Roh Moo-hyun administration, which advocated a ``self-reliant'' defense position emerging from the decades-old U.S. security umbrella.
It calls for cutting by about 180,000 troops to 500,000 until 2020 in stages to build ``smaller but stronger'' armed forces. To offset the reduced troop level, the government has pushing ahead with comprehensive arms acquisition programs.
The number of army corps will be reduced from 10 to six, and army divisions by 27 to 20 under the military restructuring plan.
Many defense experts, however, have raised questions about the military reform plan in terms of the defense readiness against the 1.1-million-strong North Korean troops armed with asymmetrical military capabilities incorporating nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, and potential budget shortfalls.
The military modernization program failed to come up with measures to counter the threats of North Korea's nuclear and missile programs after it was announced a year before the communist state test-launched a series of missiles and conducted its first-ever nuclear device test.
The plan also did not include required acquisition programs and security measures for Seoul's takeover of wartime operational control from the U.S. military in 2012, which was agreed early last year.
The plan was estimated to cost 621 trillion won (about $661 billion) based on the assumption that South Korea'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 worlds, the Roh government anticipated the defense budget would grow by 9.9 percent per year from 2006 through 2010, then by about 8.8 percent per year from 2011 through 2015, and then on average 1 percent per year from 2016 through 2020.
But the GDP did not grow at the rates projected over the past two years. Some defense analysts say about the planned 621 trillion defense budget will be short by 110 trillion won s a result.