hankyoreh

(courtesy Getty Images)

The Ministry of National Defense announced that since President Yoon Suk-yeol’s inauguration, the military has been carrying out moral and spiritual combat education for its personnel using material that contains the expression, “The North Korean military and the North Korean regime are our enemy,” since the second week of May.

Mun Hong-sik, the Defense Ministry’s deputy spokesperson, said during a regular briefing on Monday that “the current administration’s national agenda includes strengthening the spiritual combat power of military personnel” and that “relevant material has been prepared to educate [military personnel] with as part of the agenda.”

He continued, “Starting in the second week of May, [military personnel] are being educated so that they can clearly perceive the North Korean regime and the North Korean military as our enemy.”

The new basic educational material for military personnel includes phrases like, “North Korean provocations are security threats we face, and as long as these security threats continue, the North Korean military and the North Korean regime are our enemies.”

Previously, the basic educational material for military personnel read, “North Korea presents realistic military threats. If the North Korean regime and the North Korean military commit provocations and hostile acts as they did in the past, we must be ready to assume the posture and prepare the capacity to punish them strongly and firmly.”

Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup said during his confirmation hearing on May 4 that “clear language designating [North Korea] as an enemy will be included in educational materials for military personnel so that [the military] can be educated properly.”

In its list of 110 national agendas it will tackle over the next five years, under the category “Cultivating a Barracks Environment for the Future Generation and Strengthening Spiritual Combat Power Education for Military Personnel,” the Yoon Suk-yeol administration had stated it will “consider specifying ‘the North Korean regime and the North Korean military as our enemy’ in the defense white paper and others so that [the designation] can be clearly recognized.”

By Kwon Hyuk-chul, staff reporter

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