hankyoreh

By Lee Soon-hyuk

After US President Barack Obama’s unveiling of plans to reduce American military expenditures, observers are expecting South Korea to increase its own defence spending.
Ministry of National Defense policy office chief Lim Gwan-bin said the U.S. has "placed top priority on increasing economic and security interests in the Asia-Pacific Region, recognizing its allies, including South Korea, as key to Asia-Pacific security and [emphasizing] stronger security cooperation."
According to Lim's account, overall US military strength may be decreasing, but more resources will soon be allocated to the Asia-Pacific region. The importance of the Korean Peninsula will remain unchanged.
The Pentagon has said that the US military can no longer fight two wars at once and will switch to a strategy of "war in one place and deterrence in the other." Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok explained that the US plan involved "exercising deterrent force in the Middle East and other regions if a war breaks out on the Korean Peninsula after it finishes the Iraq and Afghanistan wars."
Indeed, given that the US's new defense strategy guidelines were formulated with China in mind, the strategic importance of the Korean Peninsula is sure to grow. Areas such as the Pyeongtaek military base represent essential strategic positions for the US military in its efforts to contain China’s growing presence in the region.
Kim Jong-dae, editor-in-chief of the military journal Defense 21, said, "While media reports have said that the scale of US troop reinforcements on the Korean Peninsula during wartime will drop to below 690 thousand with the implementation of the US's new defense strategy guidelines, that plan is already unrealistic because it was formulated during the Reagan era in the 1980s." The remaining issue is how the US and South Korea will divide defence duties.
First, the countries' contributions to common defense, which are negotiated in five-year terms, are set through 2013, so no immediate increase is likely. Instead, observers are predicting increased pressure on South Korea to expand its share of the combined military force, which would mean larger defense spending.
The US has previously asked that South Korea beef up its defense capabilities, moving key USFK military power such as Apache helicopter battalions to Iraq and Afghanistan, and analysts are predicting this trend to increase. The US's cuts to its defense budget and return of wartime operational command to South Korea make increases in defence more likely.
At a South Korea-US Security Consultative Meeting in October 2010, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta reportedly made a strong request to South Korean Minister of Defense Kim Kwan-jin for an increase in the South Korean military's share of defense and reinforcement of its military strength.
The South Korean national defense budget was set at 33 trillion won for 2012, compared to 8.4 trillion won in 1992 and 16.2 trillion won in 2002. This indicates a roughly twofold increase every decade, the second largest rate of increase in the world after China.

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