The Moon Jae-in administration is reportedly considering deleting the description of North Korea as our "main enemy" in its defense white paper, to be published later this year.
The Ministry of National Defense publishes the white paper every other year. In 2016, the policy paper said that North Korea's constant military threats and provocations were our primary security concerns, adding that the North Korean regime and military were our main enemy as long as these threats persist.
In the last 20 years, the ministry has been inconsistent with the use of the description of North Korea in its policy paper. The main enemy description first appeared in the defense white paper under the Kim Young-sam administration, following an inter-Korean working-level consultation in March 1994 where a North Korean representative said that they were ready to turn Seoul into a "sea of fire" in protest of Korea-U.S. joint military exercises. The defense policy paper published at the end of 1995 described the North Korean military as the "main enemy."
The description was replaced with other expressions such as "grave military threat" in 2004, following the conciliatory mood between the two Koreas after the first inter-Korean summit in 2000 between the late former President Kim Dae-jung and the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, the father of the incumbent.
The notion of the North Korean regime and military as our main enemy reappeared in the defense white paper in 2010 during the Lee Myung-bak administration after North Korea's bombardment of Yeonpyeong Island on Nov. 23, 2010.
The ministry's consideration of deleting the description has invited some concern among Koreans who still remember North Korea's provocations including the shelling of Yeonpyeong and the sinking of the frigate Cheonan. It is understandable that the Moon administration is pushing to delete it as part of follow-up measures to the April 27 Panmunjeom Declaration. The main outcome of the first summit between President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the border village of Panmunjeom contains the two leaders' resolve to reduce hostilities and embark on a roadmap to establish peace on the Korean Peninsula.
After the Moon-Kim summit, the U.S. and North Korea became engaged in denuclearization talks, culminating in the June 12 U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore. But Pyongyang has yet to take convincing measures to abandon it nuclear and missile development. Therefore, the Moon administration must be prudent about deleting the main enemy description in its defense policy paper as long as there are no fundamental changes that reduce North Korea's threats to our national security.