Can Korea Defend Itself?
The Joong Ang Ilbo has a good article comparing the sizes and capabilities of both the ROK Army and the North Korean’s People’s Army. So can the ROK Army defend South Korea without help from the US? Yes, but there is a catch:
 “Their experience and the sheer numbers alone make up for what they lack in quality,” Mr. Kwon said. “For instance, there is probably less automation, but an artillery unit operated by experienced soldiers is still deadly and they have many of them.” He cites examples in Germany, saying that after reunification in 1989, West Germany inspected former East German troops who were to be integrated into West Germany’s forces. Although the East was no economic match for the West, the Westerners were surprised to see that their former adversaries’ equipment, although old, was well-maintained and fully operational.
Mr. Kwon said that another balancing factor is the long mandatory military service requirement in North Korea, whose troops typically serve five to ten years in uniform, and even longer for the North’s special forces. The term of mandatory military duty in the South is two years. That, he said, made the average North Korean soldier the equal of a non-commissioned officer here in terms of experience. Currently, the North fields 1.1 million troops against South Korea’s 680,000. Seoul has a 3-million-strong reserve force, while North Korea’s reserves number 7.7 million.
Mr. Kwon estimated that based solely on conventional arms, South Korea has about 85 percent of the combat ability of the North; he says the republic’s Air Force is at a par, the Navy stands at 90 percent and the Army 80 percent of the North’s capabilities. He was using, he said, a formula in which weapons and units are assigned a point value based on their perceived combat effectiveness.
That, Mr. Kwon continued, would be adequate for South Korea to defend itself effectively.
According to this expert the ROK Army can independently defend South Korea. However, here is the catch, geography:
 “If you trade space for time to gather your strength while exhausting North Korean forces as they move deeper into South Korean territory, and plan to deliver a knockout punch later once sufficient force levels have been built up, what we have now is enough,” he said.
But that’s probably not acceptable, he noted, because of an inconvenient point of geography. Seoul, the nation’s capital and with its environs home to almost a quarter of the country’s population, sits only about 30 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone. Trading Seoul for time would be a psychological as well as economic blow, and a more active defense strategy would be needed. Then, he said, the South would need a combat power superiority of at least 50 or 100 percent over the North.
This is where the loss of US military is going to be felt in South Korea. Yes South Korea probably could win a war against North Korea, but at what cost? The country would be completely devestated after any second Korean War that to say that South Korea won the war would be ridiculous when the whole country and society are in ruins.  The winner could be China who may see an opportunity to come in and pick up the pieces after a second Korean War.
South Korea doesn’t have the overwhelming combat power to completely deter a war with North Korea which makes a war more likely. The loss of USFK on the Korean peninsula will greatly effect the national security on the peninsula despite what the Roh Administration claims. Nothing is going to stop the transfer of wartime control or the possible reduction of USFK troops yet the Korean government acts like it is nothing to worry about. They can’t even settle the bombing range issue yet much less build the ROK Army to the point of overwhelming combat power to completely deter any possible North Korean attack and protect the country from an unnecessary level of destruction after any war. Hopefully the next elected President of Korea will take national defense more seriously because as Nomad pointed out this train has already left the station.
