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Projected increases for national defense budget

The South Korean national defense budget is to be increased by an average of 7.5% each year between 2019 and 2023, for a total investment of 270.7 trillion won (US$242 billion) over the five-year period.

This was the content of the “Intermediate-Term National Defense Plan, 2019–2023” announced on Jan. 11 by the Ministry of National Defense (MND). A look at the plan for the defense budget over the next five years shows totals of 46.7 trillion won (US$41.75 billion) allocated for 2019 (up 8.2% from last year), 50.3 trillion won (US$44.97 billion) for 2020, 54.1 trillion won (US$48.37 billion) for 2021, 57.8 trillion won (US$51.68 billion) for 2022, and 61.8 trillion won (US$55.25 billion) for 2023, for a 7.5% annual rate of increase.

During the Lee Myung-bak administration (2008–13), the annual increase in the defense budget averaged 6.1%; under the Park Geun-hye administration (2013–16), the average was 4.2%. Explaining the reason for the Moon Jae-in administration setting a higher rate of increase in the defense budget than his conservative predecessors, a ministry official said, “Most of the projects in the area of defense capability improvement are 10- to 20-year efforts.”

“We can’t halt the projects we’ve been carrying out when there haven’t yet been any visible changes in terms of North Korea’s denuclearization,” the official said.

The same official added, “The Moon administration is very interested in military human rights and welfare, so things like a large increase in pay for soldiers also played a part.”

Indeed, the ministry plans to spend some 10.14 trillion won (US$9.06 billion) through 2022 to improve welfare and treatment for military personnel and to increase pay to 50% of the 2017 minimum wage. Another 9.5117 trillion won is to be spent on improving the quality of soldiers’ combat uniforms and food and modernize barrack facilities.

The 270.7 trillion won (US$242 billion) total for defense spending over the next five years as announced by the MND on Jan. 11 includes 94.1 trillion won (US$84.12 billion) for improvements to defense capabilities and 176.6 trillion won (US$157.87 billion) for military power operation costs. The ministry explained that 65.6 trillion won (US$58.64 billion) – roughly 70% of the total for defense capability improvements – would be spent on “responding to nuclear/WMD threats, establishing the South Korean military’s core capabilities for the operational control transfer and achieving strategic deterrence capabilities to respond to a full range of threats, including acquisition of the necessary military power in anticipation of structural changes in the military.”

One particular change in the military’s announcement of its intermediate-term was an official decision to end use of the term “Korean-style three-axis system” in favor of the more neutral “nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction threat system.” But with the budget for the system actually increasing, some critics are calling the change “merely cosmetic.”

By Noh Ji-won, staff reporter

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