<코리아헤럴드> 박상식 / Korea’s national security triad put to test

[Park Sang-seek] Korea’s national security triad put to test

2016-11-20 15:25

Most Korean people believed and hoped that Donald Trump would not be elected US president.

This was not so much because they were misled by US media reports as because they believed that if he became president, he would demand full payment of the cost of stationing US troops in Korea and withdraw them if he did not get what he wanted.

This kind of mendicant mentality is ironical and very dangerous for Korean national security.

In this sense, Koreans suffer from a dualistic mentality. They believe that South Korea’s military forces are far superior to North Korea’s in conventional arms because it is economically and technologically far superior to the other.

The only problem is North Korea’s nuclear weaponry. To make it worse, some Koreans are anti-American, believing that the US is imperialistic and uses South Korea as a military base in the Far East to contain or encircle potential enemies such as China and Russia.

Because of this belief, they tend to favor China over the US. But the fault lies with Korea rather than the US. A state which depends on a foreign power militarily is not a true independent state.

If a country is confronted with a great power, it has two choices. One way is to subordinate itself to that neighboring power. Korea had historically maintained a tributary status in relations with China until it lost its independence to Japan. Another way is to maintain an alliance with another great power.

Since South Korea regained independence from Japan, it has maintained an alliance relationship with the US in order to protect itself from not only North Korea but also the other communist neighbors.

Since the Cold War South Korea has maintained good neighborly relations with its neighboring big powers, while the two Koreas have remained hostile. In a purely military sense, South Korea is capable of dealing with North Korea’s military threat in a conventional war. If it is not yet in possession of a self-sufficient defense capability, it is its own fault. It has been dependent on the US military for so long that it has developed a kind of dependent mentality.

South Korea is responsible for the delay of transfer of wartime operational control from the US to South Korea. Under the present combined forces command system South Korean forces depend on the US forces.

Moreover, until North Korea abandons its nuclear arsenal, the US will provide extended nuclear deterrence. If the US withdraws its nuclear umbrella and North Korea refuses to abandon its nuclear weaponry, South Korea has no choice but to develop nuclear weapons.

But if the US decides to sever its alliance with South Korea, South Korea will have to build an entirely new security apparatus. It is highly unlikely that the US will abandon South Korea in the present international environment, but South Korea should be prepared for any kind of change in the security environment of Northeast Asia. The political leaders and people in general are divided into the pro-US, pro-China, pro-Russia and pro-Japan factions on the question of how to defend South Korea against any of them and to deal with the North Korean threat, just as in the last period of the 19th century.

Under the present circumstances, maintenance of the ROK-US alliance and security cooperation with Japan is the best choice for South Korea. Japan is a lesser evil than China and Russia, not because Japan is more reliable than the other two, but because Korea and Japan share the same security goal which is supported by the US. The alliance between a big and a small power always costs the latter more than the former.

A more urgent task for South Korea is to build a self-reliant defense force as soon as possible. How long should South Korea postpone the transfer of wartime operational control from the US? The longer it is delayed, the longer dependence of the South Korean military on its US counterpart will last.

It is a cowardly behavior, admission of Korea’s military incompetence or the revelation of its mendicant mentality. Trump’s policy may give South Korea a strong impetus to build a self-reliant defense capability.

When a country is in a domestic crisis as South Korea is now, the triad of government branches in charge of diplomacy, intelligence and defense becomes crucially important. This is the reason why, in all states, government control is strong in these three areas than in any other areas.

This is particularly so, because South Korea is under the direct threat of North Korea. National survival is directly affected by how efficiently and effectively these branches operate. They should closely cooperate in planning and executing national security policies, particularly the North Korea strategy.

For this purpose, these three arms of national security should make all-out efforts to eradicate bureaucratic sclerosis, politicization and personal incompetence. First, they should root out the malfeasant, irresponsible and selfish behavior warned by the Peter Principle and Parkinson’s Law. Second, they should maintain political neutrality, which is an important principle of bureaucracy.

Third, they should be run by the most competent personnel so that the Foreign Ministry can pursue proactive rather than reactive diplomacy and the National Intelligence Agency can secure the independent capability to obtain the primary sources of intelligence, while the Defense Ministry can maintain the most advanced military system and highly professional soldiers. Finally, the government in a crisis should pursue a strictly bi-partisan national security policy.

By Park Sang-seek

Park Sang-seek is a former rector of the Graduate Institute of Peace Studies, Kyung Hee University, and the author of “Globalized Korea and Localized Globe.” He can be reached at parksangseek@hotmail.com. – Ed.