STRENGTH THROUGH COOPERATION
         Military Forces in the  Asia-Pacific Region

SOUTH KOREA'S STRATEGY OF CONFLICT: The Past, Present, and Future
       Yong Sup Han  

Introduction

Unlike the rest of the world, which now lives in unprecedented peace, the Korean peninsula is the most dangerous region in the world.  As the 21st century approaches, Korea still remains divided and haunted by the possibility of conflicts.  The two Koreas are still engaged in an arms competition, the North willing to maintain a military advantage at the risk of crushing its economy because of the financial burden of an arms buildup.  As a result, the most frequently asked question nowadays is whether North Korea will initiate another war against South  Korea.

South Korea's defense planning during the past five decades has centered around how to deter and defend the South against the North's formidable military threat.  Despite the end of the Cold War, Seoul's defense planning still remains threat-driven.  Because Seoul could not deter and defend itself alone, it entered into an alliance with the United States as its security guarantor.  This alliance, with its combined defense doctrine, has successfully deterred the North from attacking and has provided a means of defense should deterrence fail.  With U.S. security assistance and cooperation, Seoul has accomplished remarkable force modernization and ultimately has set a goal to be able to defend itself without U.S. help in the future.

Dr. Yong Sup Han is a professor at the Korean National Defense University. He formerly worked in the Korean Ministry of National Defense, South-North Joint Nuclear Control Commission, in 1991 and 1992, and in 1993 was Special Advisor to the Korean Minister of National Defense.

These actions, however, have not curtailed North Korea's desire to win the arms competition.  The North Koreans have essentially created new initiatives in the development of nuclear weapons and chemical and biological warfare capabilities in conjunction with missile development and deployment.  These new weapon capabilities combined with the possibility of the collapse of North Korea compound the security problem in the peninsula.  Thus, deterrence and defense on the peninsula need to be considered in an entirely different fashion.  In addition to traditional deterrence and defense strategies that have served South Korea's national goals and U.S. national interests, South Korea needs to determine what other types of strategy should be incorporated into its defense plan to avert a possible crisis on the peninsula.

This paper attempts to analyze South Korea's defense objectives, threats to national security, military strategy, and doctrine in conjunction with defense planning and force structure; assesses the role of the United States on the Korean peninsula; and suggests policy options to prevent a possible crisis on the peninsula.  

Defense Objectives  

South Korea's national goals are to safeguard the nation under a free democracy; to preserve independence through the peaceful unification of the fatherland; to realize a welfare state by guaranteeing Koreans' freedom and basic rights and improving their living standards; and finally, to enhance national prestige and contribute to world peace by improving its international status.¹

To attain these national goals, South Korea's defense objectives are articulated as follows: to defend the nation from external military threats and aggression, to support a peaceful unification, and to contribute to regional stability and world peace.²  In national goals as well as in defense objectives, peace is underscored four times.  Defense objectives are solely defense oriented to accomplish deterrence and defense against North Korea's continuous and intensifying military threats. Furthermore, defense objectives address the need to prepare for future threats to preserve Korea's security and stability in the post unification era.

In the post-Cold War era, South Korea's defense objectives go beyond military-oriented security.  South Korea's defense intends to contribute to the creation of a more peaceful peninsula and world by expanding roles and missions of its armed forces.  The South Korean Government has not only actively participated in international peace keeping operations, but also pursued confidence-building and arms-control measures on the peninsula as well as in the Northeast Asian region.  The South Korean Government continues to contribute to the creation of a more peaceful world.  For example, South Korea has maintained a solely defensive strategy and doctrine against possible attacks by North Korea; not taken any retaliatory actions against North Korea's past terrorist and infiltration activities; and made a firm commitment to the nonnuclear policy in conjunction with dialogue efforts to peacefully resolve North Korea's nuclear issue.

South Korea intends to contribute to the creation of a more benign and cooperative world by helping countries concentrate their efforts on achieving economic prosperity and security during the post-Cold War era without any interruption.  

Military Threats to South Korea

As noted in South Korea's defense objectives, the greatest military threat South Korea is facing is North Korea's unchanging offensive strategy and posture. North Korea's traditional military strategy is to launch a blitzkrieg intended to sweep the entire peninsula before the arrival of U.S. reinforcements.  It is anticipated that the North Koreans will strike the front and rear at the same time with a mix of mechanized troops, armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery and missiles, and special purpose forces.  

Despite economic constraints, North Korea has concentrated on a military buildup emphasizing heavily mechanized forces, deploying massive forces forward and strengthening firepower with long-range artillery and missiles.  In addition to traditional Four Military Guidelines, North Korea revised its constitution to reiterate the importance of short-time surprise attack and breakthrough warfare in 1992.  Since then, North Korea has started to field long-range heavy artillery units equipped with 170-mm self-propelled artillery and 240-mm multiple rocket launchers to the front, combined with the full-fledged development of long-range missiles, while taking openly provocative actions against South Korea.  Especially during the nuclear crisis in 1994, the North showed the most belligerent actions against the South by threatening to set Seoul into a sea of fire if the world were to impose sanctions against the North because of its nuclear weapons program.

In spite of South Korea's continuous efforts to catch up with North Korea's force level, the South is still far behind the North in the conventional balance.  As seen in the following table, the North has a numerical advantage in all aspects.  Although some experts maintain that the technological edge of the South can sufficiently compensate for the numerical advantage of the North, analysis of the conventional balance shows that the South would fail to hold the forward defense coherently under a war scenario where the North achieves strategic surprise and implements blitzkrieg warfare as it has planned during the past four decades.³  This implies that the South should prepare for this surprise attack scenario with more caution.

The imminent danger that North Korea might initiate a war out of desperation is ominously predicted by some circles. In particular, U.S. experts give warning that the North might start chemical and biological warfare based on their judgment that it is the only way for the North to win the war before the United States initiates reinforcements to counterattack the North.⁴ 

North Korea is estimated to possess approximately 1,000 tons of chemical weapons and maintains eight chemical plants to produce more chemical agents.⁵  They also possess delivery systems for chemical weapons such as mortars, field artillery, multiple rocket launchers, FROG-5, FROG-7, and SCUD missiles.  In addition to the chemical weapons, North Korea's missiles constitute a major threat to South Korea as well as Japan.  The North is estimated to have more than 200 Scud-B and C missiles and to have developed and deployed Rodong-I missiles with ranges over 1,000 km.  

Comparison of Military Capabilities of South and North Korea

Source: ROK Ministry of National Defense, Defense White Paper 1996-1997, 64.

  If the North starts a chemical campaign against U.S. forces in Korea and the South's major military bases, especially air bases, the North will be able to inflict irrecoverable damage on the ROK-U.S. combined forces.  Therefore, chemical and biological attacks are considered to be most worrisome as the conventional balance approaches parity within a midterm, provided that South Korea and the United States adhere to the defense-only strategy and posture.  If the North Koreans experience initial success with their air suppression and ground surprise attack, this may tempt them to use chemical weapons with missile delivery systems, which would impact U.S. and South Korean defenses.

There are also other dangers associated with crises and conflicts short of war.⁶  The North Koreans may turn their internal crisis into an external conflict by either deploying weapons against South Korea in an effort to receive assurances concerning regime survival for the North from South Korea and the United States or by launching a suicidal attack to end their regime.  

Military Strategy

South Korea's military strategy is designed to meet two defense objectives simultaneously: deterring military threats in peacetime and defending in wartime are the centerpieces of South Korean defense objectives.  The possibility of a North Korean surprise attack is the most obvious threat to South Korea's security.  Seoul has relied on the bilateral alliance with the United States to deter North Korea's military threats. Nuclear and conventional deterrence via the bilateral alliance is the core of South Korea's deterrence strategy.  

The nuclear equation on the peninsula has been altered, however, as a result of the complete withdrawal of nuclear weapons from South Korea in December 1991 and the Geneva Accord of October 1994.  According to the Geneva Accord, the United States is supposed to provide to North Korea formal assurances against the threat or use of nuclear weapons in the future.  This is quite a departure from traditional U.S. nuclear policy, which did not provide negative security assurances individually to any state.  However, U.S. provision of negative security assurances is in line with U.N. Security Council Resolution No. 984 of October 1995. If U.S. negative security assurances are provided to North Korea, it means that U.S. nuclear deterrence is changing vis-a-vis North Korea.  As a consequence, U.S. and South Korean deterrence strategy should be transformed from nuclear to conventional, unless North Korea creates an entirely new situation where the United States should reconsider the use of nuclear weapons.  This would be in the case of a North Korean chemical and biological attack. Accordingly, South Korea and the United States are entering a new era when the conventional deterrence plays a more important role.

South Korea's conventional deterrence has also relied upon the combined ROK-U.S. deterrence strategy.  Although South Korea's exceedingly stronger economic and technological capabilities could have enabled the South to easily win the arms race with the North, the South did not attempt it.  Instead, the South has a self-imposed restraint on military manpower and has willingly adopted a defensive strategy requiring smaller numbers of manpower and weapons than the North.

After the Korean War, South Korea strengthened fortification and chose a linear and forward defense not to allow North Korea even an inch of South Korea's territory. Together with U.S. forward presence in the South, the deterrence strategy has served defense objectives of both Korea and the United States, although it had failed to deter periodic North Korean terrorist and infiltration activities.  

Doctrine

What types of operational concepts and guiding principles of war would successfully implement South Korea's deterrence and defense strategies?  South Korea's countermeasures against all-out war initiated by North Korea consist of three parts: responding to the North Korea's surprise attack as quickly as possible; defending the capital and rear areas; and defending territorial sea and air at the same time.⁷

To minimize damage and casualties at the initial phase of the war, South Korean forces have been trained to counter a North Korean attack immediately.  South Korean forces are well trained to block maneuver of North Korea's first-echelon forces and the highly mobile and mechanized forces with tank barriers and artillery counterattack, while cutting into the North's logistical support of those forces by executing an air-ground attack on the North's first echelon forces.  

However, whether South Korean forces can restore a coherent defense at the earliest time hinges on how well Seoul can quickly overcome the panic that may result from the artillery and missile attack on Seoul at the beginning of the war. South Korea is training forces by establishing an integrated operational command system to implement joint operations at the initial stage with ground, air and sea forces.  Here, informational warfare concepts come in to shorten Seoul's response time.  To minimize initial damage or panic, automated and integrated warning systems are crucial, so Seoul operates a 24-hour-a-day early-warning system.  Since it is mainly South Korea's responsibility to defend Korea before the arrival of U.S. reinforcements, it is important that South Korea enhance its air-defense capabilities together with its own surveillance and early warning capabilities.  South Korea's enhancement in battlefield surveillance and early warning system, C⁴I, and air defense missiles can improve the balance, but South Korea needs more time to outpace the North's numerical advantage.

As the chances for unification increase, potential threats that South Koreans have never thought of will likely need attention.  Debates on the utility of a blue-water navy, the use of deterrence by denial, and whether U.S. presence on the Korean peninsula should be allowed in the postunification era have begun to take place.  The South Korean Government's position is that the United States should maintain minimal forces on the peninsula after unification  to ensure regional stability in Northeast Asia.⁸

To accomplish a successful defense of the capital and rear areas, South Korea places an emphasis on effective defense against long-range artillery and missile attack on Seoul and on improving the readiness of reserve forces in the rear. South Korea has established an automated air defense system by deploying interceptors, surface-to-air missiles, and air defense artillery on possible air corridors to detect and intercept enemy air raids, while taking immediate actions against enemy forces in main thrust areas with ground and air power to slow down their rapid movement into Seoul.

Rear-area defense is required to improve readiness to prevent North Korea from simultaneously making a front and rear attack with special purpose forces.  Thus, early mobilization of reserve forces and training becomes relevant.  Measures would be taken to prevent North Korean Special Purpose Forces from achieving their goals of creating disorder in the rear and connecting the rear battle with the front.

How can South Korea defend the territorial sea and air from a North Korean attack?  South Korea has set a 12-mile zone of territorial sea and fielded an upgraded sea patrol to protect the territorial sea and sea lanes of communication.  For air defense, the Korea Air Defense Identification Zone was established to identify aircraft at the earliest moment, ensuring air control over Korean air space by quickly intercepting enemy aircraft.

In addition to holding the North Korean attack in the front, a counterattack doctrine is necessary to strengthen deterrence and defense.  In this connection, South Korea has adapted an active defense doctrine.  According to the ROK-U.S. combined strategy and doctrine, counterattack starts after U.S. reinforcements finish arriving in Korea.  Therefore, the active defense is under consideration to shorten the time in changing the holding mission into a counterattack operation.  

Defense Planning and Force Structure

South Korea's defense planning has been centered around attaining four specific operational goals:  

• Fostering a more self-reliant defense posture

• Maintaining and developing an ROK-U.S. security alliance

• Developing high-quality military forces to meet the quest for the information age

• Broadening military ties with Asia-Pacific countries.  

First, to foster a more self-reliant defense posture, the South has initiated the Force Improvement Programs, which now look beyond the immediate North Korean threat toward the development of operational capabilities relevant to contingencies a unified Korea might use to defend itself and its interests. This last point is related to a notable increase in naval and air capabilities in recent years. The vibrant ROK economic growth has allowed the allocation of increasingly substantial resources to defense. Between 1980 and 1995, defense spending as a share of GNP fell from 6 to 3.3 percent and as a share in the national budget from 35.9 to 22.1 percent.  However, in real terms, there has been a significant increase in military expenditures, to $15.7 billion in 1996. The defense improvement program for the next 5 years, announced in December 1995, anticipated total expenditures of $115 billion between 1997 and 2001, 26.9 percent of which will be directed toward procurement.⁹   

Together with force modernization, South Korea aspires to take a more important role in defense as a result of the reduction of U.S. forces after the end of the Cold War.  South Korea and the United States came to the agreement that South Korea has the leading role in defending Korea, while the United States will takes the supporting role.¹⁰  The two countries went a step further to materialize the division of labor officially in 1994 with the transfer of peacetime operational control authority for the Commander-in-Chief, Combined Forces Command to South Korean Armed Forces.

Certainly, modernization of defense capabilities has been achieved with a combination of domestic production and foreign acquisition mainly from the United States.  Seoul began in 1973 to produce basic defense equipment and weapons with U.S. technical assistance.  During the 1980s, defense production declined significantly because the Korean Government changed the arms procurement policy from domestic production to overseas procurement in an effort to acquire more high-tech weapons, once again from the United States.

Second, since the Korean War, almost all Seoul's defense efforts have been to maintain and develop the ROK-U.S. alliance.  Currently, the ROK-U.S. alliance is supported by three pillars:  the ROK-U.S. Mutual Defense Treaty, signed in 1953; the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command, established in 1978; and the annual Security Consultative Meetings, started in 1968.  Although South Korea and U.S. forces in Korea are mainly responsible for holding a North Korean attack in the front, later counterattacking operations against North Korean forces are to be conducted with the arrival of the U.S. reinforcements on Korean soil. In this regard, wartime reserve stocks for allies, pre-positioning, and wartime host-nation support take on importance along with the U.S. provision of deterrence against North Korea.  Security consultations concentrate on how to successfully execute combined defense operations in the event of a crisis.

However, implementation of the U.S. win-win strategy has been impacted long term, because of the shrinking U.S. defense budget and the reduction of combined exercises with allies.  According to the win-win strategy, the United States is supposed to fight and win two major regional conflicts simultaneously.  The key to success in the win-win strategy is whether the United States can deploy forces rapidly to achieve its objectives decisively. Nevertheless, the time to deploy forces to an area of conflict will take longer than expected.¹¹  

The ROK-U.S. security alliance has influenced all aspects of South Korean strategy, doctrine, defense planning, and training and exercises in that Seoul cannot think of its defense without the United States.  The biggest and most important ROK-U.S. joint exercise, Team Spirit, started in 1976, is designed to test the ability of the ROK and U.S. forces to fight together in time of war.  Because Team Spirit exercises were terminated, combat capabilities and readiness of the combined forces will begin to decline as time goes on unless other measures are undertaken to make up for this loss.  To compensate for the lack of these combined exercises, South Korea independently started the Hokuk maneuver exercises.

Third, to create a high-quality military force, Seoul is restructuring with an emphasis on the creation of forces suitable for the information age. Seoul is transforming its force structure from one that is labor intensive into one that is technology intensive, in an effort to meet requirements in the future stemming from information warfare.  Ground forces stress the importance of improving strategic and tactical intelligence units to secure high-speed, air-land battle capabilities.  The Navy is focusing on improving joint operation capabilities.  The Air Force is concentrating on improving combat capabilities for multiple purposes and early warning.  In anticipation of future unification, force structure is also undergoing a change from a ground-centered to a more balanced force structure among three services, because a ground-centered force structure alone cannot effectively attain defense goals against addressing future military threats. However, achieving this change is very difficult because of bureaucratic inertia, interservice rivalry, and North Korea's ground-centered force structure.

South Korea intends to advance its information warfare capabilities with three principles in mind: find the enemy first, make a quicker decision, and attack the enemy before the enemy attacks. In this regard, early modernization of command, control, communications, computer, and information (C⁴I) projects take priority.  Although South Korea has relied on the ROK-U.S. Combined Forces Command for informational warfare technology, South Korea is now carrying out projects to advance its self-reliant surveillance, early warning, and electronic combat capabilities as a part of the Force Improvement Program.

Fourth, to broaden and develop military exchange and cooperation with Asia-Pacific countries, South Korea expanded its range of international links with other countries as a part of a globalization strategy.  With the demise of the Cold War, South Korea has sought to broaden military ties with countries in Asia and the Pacific through exchange and cooperation among high-level government officials and military.  In an effort to stabilize the Korean peninsula, in the 1990s South Korea normalized relations with Russia and China, the traditional allies of North Korea.

For economic and security reasons, South Korea tried to diversify defense procurements and defense technology cooperation with European countries.  As long as North Korea remains the major military threat, South Korea realizes that there are inherent risks associated with its efforts to enlarge military ties with Asia-Pacific countries.  Multilateral cooperation cannot guarantee its security, which has resulted from the bilateral alliance with the United States.  Nevertheless, broadening and deepening policy consultations with surrounding countries contribute to the creation of a more peaceful and cooperative Northeast Asia and world.  

Role of the United States

U.S. influence on South Korean defense is everywhere, ranging from the Planning-Programming-Budgeting System to weapon systems.  U.S. forward military presence has been crucial to deterring a North Korean attack and will remain critically important during any future crisis with North Korea.  The bilateral security consultation mechanism is so robust that it becomes a security alliance model for other nations to emulate.  The most recent success case is when the ROK and United States resolved North Korea's nuclear issue through close consultation.

Although this bilateral alliance has been successful on the whole, there are a lot of challenges for further improvement of this relationship in the future. First, the two countries should find a reasonable middle ground between the need for interoperability on the one hand, and economic consideration on the other when addressing South Korea's weapons acquisition policy.

Second, the two countries should reach a consensus as to strategic goals they want to achieve in dealing with North Korea and how they will encourage desirable changes in North Korea.  Third, South Korea and the United States should find solutions to North Korea's contingencies short of war as North Korea's economy continues to deteriorate.  Lastly, the two countries should determine the type of alliance structure that would be most desirable and acceptable to all parties after unification.

In a regional context, it would be helpful to determine what types of current issues this alliance should tackle with the help of surrounding countries, China in particular.  As the former U.S. Ambassador James Laney said, additional policies are now required in the face of new risks arising from North Korean weakness and continued economic and social decline without giving up deterrence. These risks include provocative border incidents to divert attention from domestic problems, factional conflicts that could spill over the DPRK borders, and a descent into chaos with consequences for all of Northeast Asia.¹²  Another possibility that cannot be dismissed is that desperate North Korean leaders could strike out at South Korea despite the deterrent nature of a massive South Korea and U.S. counterattack.

Just as the Geneva Accord of October 1994 was a product of continuous policy consultations between the United States and South Korea, Seoul and Washington need to work on a combination of defense and arms control approaches with regard to North Korea's imminent crisis.  We need to take into account the fact that North Korea still places the highest priority on the military at the cost of the civilian lives.  Should we provide staples to North Korea, North Korea will likely fill the military needs first without reducing defense expenditures to save civilian lives.  Likewise, to broker an arms control agreement with North Korea, every avenue and every means should be pursued by proposing a comprehensive deal linking massive foreign aid to North Korea's concession on weapons either through four-party talks or through other appropriate channels. 

Conclusion  

U.S. influences on South Korea's defense planning, crisis management, military strategy, and doctrine are so dominant that South Korea's defense cannot be thought of without the ROK-U.S. alliance.  However, the long-term direction is for South Korea to deter and defend on its own, with the United States playing an important role in ensuring regional peace and stability as a stabilizer or balancer in the region.

With the turn of the century, South Korea alone will be able to achieve military parity with the North, as Seoul spends more money on defense than Pyongyang.  However, Seoul and Washington recognize that security and stability on the Korean peninsula cannot be enhanced by military balance alone. As North Korea faces an imminent internal crisis, circumstances may evolve where deterrence could fail irrespective of the robust readiness and defense posture of South Korea and the United States.  In this connection, a traditional strategy of conflict should be supplemented by a new strategy of cooperation to dampen the North Korean crisis.

In this regard, four-party talks and other multilateral security cooperation are needed to induce North Korea's gradual accommodation to the international quest for peaceful change in North Korea. Above all, ROK-U.S. security cooperation should be strengthened to resolve the whole new set of security problems.  To do so, both governments should make combined efforts with the division of labor clearly spelled out.  Other countries such as China, Japan, and Russia should make collective efforts to induce changes in North Korea while preventing the worst case scenario from happening.  In addition, North Korea's participation in the multilateral security dialogue should be encouraged with well-thought-out plans.  

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Notes