South
Korea's path towards
militarization By Yong Kwon
Since pre-modern times, Northeast Asia has
perpetually been heavily armed and fortified. With
the Cold War powers continuing to bolster military
assets and North Korea regularly upsetting
stability in the region, it seems unlikely that
the demilitarization will occur anytime soon. If
anything, the recent clashes over maritime
boundaries in the South and East China Seas show
the primacy of military might in the continent's
statecraft. Into this fray, an additional power
has been making its way towards the headlines:
South Korea.
Historically, Seoul has been
a relative bystander in the region's military
buildup, heavily reliant on the US military and
more focused on economic growth than war games.
Due to its experience in the Korean War and its
overwhelming security
concerns, it is not that
South Korea has been uninterested in obtaining
greater offensive capabilities. On the contrary,
the state had repeatedly tried to obtain nuclear
weapons and industrialization in the 1970s was in
part to promote domestic weapons manufacturing
capabilities (See "'Mr
K' shows Korea's Cold War lingers," Asia Times
Online, July 12, 2011 ).
However, other
priorities had existed. During its formative years
in the 1950s and 60s, alongside turmoil that
obstructed political consensus and economic
development, Seoul was more concerned about
fostering the national economy than focusing on
overhauling its armed forces. Recognizing the
prohibitive expense of militarization, the crux of
the country's foreign policy in the 1970s remained
relying on the trans-Pacific alliance with
Washington and undercutting Pyongyang by building
a relationship with Moscow and Beijing.
For what Seoul needed to achieve during
the Cold War, its policies were largely
successful. President Park Chung-hee went as far
as to dispatch Korean forces to Vietnam to retain
a sizeable contingent of US forces in South Korea
and through rapprochement and Nordpolitik,
eventually both China and the Soviet Union
established ties with Seoul. In addition, the
country was stable and prosperous enough that
North Korea was deterred from pursuing an armed
reunification of the peninsula. The economic
prowess of the country even brought much sought
after international recognition, which further
aided Seoul's legitimacy over Pyongyang.
Although relative to other countries,
South Korea did spend an enormous portion of its
GDP on purchasing arms and maintaining its
military forces, it certainly did not go the
lengths of its northern neighbor or other
countries with comparable security threats.
Yet with South Korea's burgeoning role in
international trade and the new political regional
power dynamic after the collapse of the Soviet
Union, Seoul's military needs were vastly
expanded. The issue with Somali pirates presents a
good example where Korea's new bluewater fleet is
directly preserving Korean economic interests in
the Indian Ocean. In addition, signs of military
weakness along the maritime border with North
Korea, exemplified by the surprise attack on the
corvette Cheonan and the failure to effectively
respond to the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in
2010, pushed the government to double down on
South Korea's national defense.
Considering the tense geopolitical
circumstances that surround the region, Seoul's
militarization plans are of extreme importance.
Negotiations between Seoul and Washington on
increasing the range of South Korea's missiles
from 300 kilometers (km) to 800 km have just
finished. From the Korean perspective, the
increase is justified by that fact that all the
surrounding powers have ballistic missiles with
range that exceed 10,000 km; Alongside China's
Dongfeng and Russia's Topol missiles, even Japan
has independent long-range ballistic missile
capabilities with the MU-5 rockets. Most
importantly, North Korea's attempt at producing
its own ballistic missile, the still unsuccessful
Taepodong-2, drives South Korea's case for an
effective ballistic weapons program.
However, Washington has always been wary
of giving more leeway to Seoul. And for good
reason. Much like the South Korean navy which is
obviously being equipped to handle military action
far away from the waters around the peninsula, the
missiles have an added range that serve no purpose
but to further intensify the arms race in
Northeast Asia. [1] If anything, it is Seoul's way
of inching closer towards being able to have
ballistic nuclear missiles.
Indeed, the
discussion in the public forum has already
included not just the limited range of South
Korean missiles, but also their payload. Framing
Seoul's defense needs to just the peninsula, South
Korea's military analysts and officials emphasized
that a payload of 500 kg was enough to develop
bunker busters that would be capable of attacking
North Korea's entrenched shore battery positions
along its southwestern shores.
Although
the expansion of the missile range was agreed upon
with the understanding between the two countries
that the payload will be limited to 500 kg, South
Korean officials will certainly breach the subject
of increasing the payload capacity of its missiles
in the future. Meanwhile, Seoul has also acquired
permission to deploy unmanned aerial vehicles
(UAV) with a maximum payload of 2.5 tons.
Complementing this move, several prominent
political figures have called for the revision of
the US-South Korea Nuclear Cooperation Agreement
(see treaty here
) which is nearing its 2014 expiration. While many
domestic voices support a revision on the economic
basis that South Korea needs uranium enrichment
capabilities to become more energy independent,
others in the public and the National Assembly are
openly supportive of developing nuclear weapons.
[2]
While there is little chance that
Washington will make changes to the agreement that
would in any way allow Seoul to even think about
developing nuclear weapons, Seoul's policies aimed
at bulking up its conventional military
capabilities carry enormous implications. For
Washington, South Korea's new militarization
ventures represent additional weight to its
delicate balancing game in the Asia-Pacific where
the United States wants its allies to become more
responsible for its security but at the same time,
not create new conflicts that would require
greater US military assets allocated to the Far
East.
With South Korea currently engaged
in a heated territorial dispute with Japan (which
resulted in a brief standoff between the Japanese
Self-Defense Force navy and the Republic of Korea
navy on September 24) and considering South
Korea's standing dispute with China over their
maritime border on the Yellow Sea, Seoul's ability
to further enforce its territorial claims will
impact inter-regional relations in the near
future.
And another fuse is set to the
tinderbox region of Northeast Asia.
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