[Column] The S. Korean military’s failure to develop

Posted on : 2013-07-20 13:46 KST Modified on : 2013-07-20 13:46 KST
Transfer of wartime operational control again being delayed because the S. Korean army still isn’t able to defend

By Kim Jong-dae, chief editor of Defense 21+

Though its defense budget is only about half the size of South Korea’s, Israel has done an effective job of defending itself against the 300 million Arabs in the Middle East.

Israel’s independent defense strategy is not solely based on the fact that it has nuclear weapons. Rather, Israel relies on its ability to innovate. It has taken a small army and upgraded it into a contemporary force that is run effectively.

These strengths of the Israeli army are nowhere to be found in the South Korean military.

Napoleon once said, “One must change one’s tactics every 10 years.” A military that fails to bring its weaponry in line with the times and accept change is doomed to fight losing wars, no matter how much money it spends. Because of this lesson, most countries are developing modern military strategies and dedicating themselves to building innovative militaries.

When the French military ignored this lesson, it collapsed before the advance of the German military in the Second World War. This was despite the fact that the two countries had invested almost the same amount of money in their militaries.

The ROK army is just as anachronistic as the French military was before World War II. The Korean peninsula is a small battlefield. It would only take five minutes for a fighter taking off from Seoul to reach Pyongyang. Nevertheless, the ROK military still clings to an unrealistic operational plan based on a 120-day war.

The ROK military squanders the precious resources of the defense budget through all kinds of redundancy, a proliferation of inefficient organizations, and a complicated chain of command. About 30% of the lieutenant colonels and colonels in the entire military are not doing any work since they have already missed their chance for promotion. In 1990, the military announced its 818 Plan, which was supposed to be an effort to “improve the structure of the army, making it more nimble and uncluttered.” But today, 23 years later, the plan has still not been implemented.

If anything, the military has become even more bloated and undisciplined. There is something strange about even calling this an military that can win wars. Troubling signs began to appear during the sinking of the Cheonan warship and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in 2010.

That’s the ROK military for you. Even after it takes a beating, it still refuses to reform.

Any suggestions that the military should get its act together are met with hostility. We can’t do it, military officers say, because we don’t have the budget for it. This is the same mentality that produced the idea to once again delay the transfer of wartime operational control. The main reasons given for proposing the delay are so embarrassing that one wishes they hadn’t even been made public.

“The defense budget was inadequate, so we weren’t able to strengthen our military capability as planned,” they say. “The ROK military still doesn’t have the ability to command in battle.” “North Korea has increased its nuclear and long-range missile threat.”

If the ROK military is in such a poor condition that it can’t even give orders to its own soldiers, what was the South Korean Ministry of Defense doing when it talked about “preemptive strikes against North Korean nuclear weapons and missiles as a defensive measure,” “an attack on the North Korean command structure,” and “aggressive suppression”?

Why did the Ministry make these useless, reactionary threats when it wasn’t ready or able to carry them out?

Why is it that the leaders of the ROK military say the right things and go through the motions but then get cold feet at the crucial moment when a truly important decision must be made?

During the presidential election campaign, Park Geun-hye promised that the transfer of wartime operational control would go ahead as the US and South Korea had agreed. After the election and during the transitional committee’s tenure, Kim Jang-soo, chief of security, said the same thing.

And yet the media are reporting that the Park administration had actually been negotiating with the US behind the scenes to delay the transfer of operational control while Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin was trying to ride the wave of popular opinion by floating the idea of keeping the joint US-ROK military command, which is in fact impossible.

We are witness to the cowardly behavior of military leaders who lack the confidence to win and who are only intent on saving themselves. This is a fraud that has been perpetrated against the entire Korean people. If the minister, chairman, chief of staff, and commanders are not confident that they can put their own words into action, the best thing they can do for the security of the country is to step down.

Today marks the 26th year since the presidential election in 1987, when we first started saying that wartime operational control should be transferred to South Korea. But nothing seems to have changed in the army. Instead, the military keeps offering tired excuses.

We don’t want to hear them anymore. The army is too comfortable with its dependence on the US to be able to reform. It is also unable to take control of the situation on the Korean peninsula. Since military leaders don’t have the vision to try anything, there isn’t any use in expecting them to develop.

The views presented in this column are the writer’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Hankyoreh. 

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]

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