The Future of the Korean Military

                                                                                                 written by 20306 Kim Tae Yeon

Now that the Industrial Revolution is taking place, the armies of many countries around the world are trying to respond to the changing era.

Many countries around the world are participating in a new era of national defense by boldly replacing all projects that operate around human power with drones, robots, information and communication technologies and data construction.

The United States military created a new concept called Mosaic Warfare. Mosaic Warfare is a method of war that uses various technologies, military equipment, and strategies different from existing strategies to prevent the enemy from grasping American intentions and trends. It features a distributed and adaptable power management system based on hyper connectivity, superintelligence, and convergence.

The Korean military is also adapting. At the 6th Defense Industry Development Council on August 8th, 2020, former Defense Minister Chung Kyung Doo said, “The defense industry is a key national industry to build strong security and a future growth engine for the Korean economy to drive high-tech development and generate defense exports.”

The South Korean government announced that it will train more than 50,000 professionals that can operate AI and big data for future industries to handle new technologies over the next five years from 2022 to 2027.

However, the movement for adaptation and change within Korea inevitably interacts with military relations with other countries. Assuming that South and North Korea are not integrated, security issues will affect many countries, including South Korea, the United States, Japan, and China, and there will still be a military conflict between South and North Korea in the future. 

The war or armed conflict between South Korea and North Korea puts many countries worldwide on edge. Especially if the United States participates in the war between Russia and Ukraine, there is a risk of World War III. 

Historically, South Korea has had a close alliance with the United States and North Korea with China and Russia to maintain a balance of power. 

In particular, the alliance between South Korea and the United States is a close and important relationship for both countries. From the time of Korea’s independence to right after the Korean War, Korea was protected by the U.S. 

Since the 1970s, South Korea and the United States have been close security partners. The South Korea-U.S. joint drills have been conducted for a long time, mainly to prepare for military clashes around the Pacific Ocean, including North Korea, according to the revealed training contents. 

China and North Korea also have a cooperative relationship in which North Korea has consistently received military supplies from China. In addition, when the COVID-19 crisis occurred in 2021, China provided aid to North Korea. At that time, North Korea’s media, the Central News Agency, described the relationship between the two countries as a blood alliance, showing that the two countries were very close.

According to the BBC, the South Korea-U.S. Joint Command Post Training, a joint exercise between South Korea and U.S. forces in the second half of 2022, conducted joint readiness checks against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats. 

However, the North Korean military is threatening several countries with nuclear weapons and missiles, breaking the 9.19 military agreement, a cease-fire aimed at preventing armed conflict between South and North Korea and protecting the peace. 

In response, the U.S. is considering implementing a “nuclear umbrella” to protect South Korea from the North Korean nuclear threat in October. A nuclear umbrella means that a non-nuclear state is protected by nuclear weapons from a state which has them. Countries threatened with nuclear war are provided with it.