Category: ROK Military

Here are the latest changes coming to the ROK military:

The South Korean military will begin to deploy new weapons systems and significantly upgrade its technological capabilities in response to South Korea’s shrinking population and the North’s development of nuclear weapons, including a ballistic missile as destructive as a tactical nuclear weapon, according to the Defense Ministry’s 2022-2026 defense plan which was released Thursday.   
   
It is expected that 315.2 trillion won ($271.8 billion) will be spent achieving the plan, the military’s five-year blueprint for upgrading its arsenal.   
   
A highlight of the plan is a surface-to-surface missile that can carry a 3-ton warhead and fly up to 400 kilometers (248 miles), which is in the final phase of development.  
   
The plan comes after the United States agreed to lift Cold War-era restrictions on South Korean missile technology in May, following a summit between President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Joe Biden.  
   
The plan would also re-organize the armed forces to reflect the rising significance of technology and the military’s declining pool of eligible men to serve.  
   
The Army will be reorganized into a troop-saving unit structure based on high-tech technology, maintaining the current two-fold operational command structure: the Ground Operations Command and the Second Operations Command.  
   
However, with the elimination of the 6th and 8th Army Corps, the number of Army Corps will be reduced from eight to six, while the number of divisions will decrease from 35 to 33.

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but if the ROK military is making cuts because of decreases in manpower they could always start conscripting women as well.

By the way does anyone find the Defense Minister visiting a ROK Navy ship in a hazmat suit a bit ridiculous?

If this was done for the U.S. military I am willing to bet there would be less convictions because of the higher standards to convict in a civilian court:

Military sex crimes will be tried in civilian courts, not in military courts, as the National Assembly on Tuesday approved a revision of the military justice system in the wake of suicide deaths of sexual harassment victims at barracks.

Under the revision of the Military Court Act, all sex crimes in the military will be tried at civilian courts from the beginning. Also to be dealt with by civilian courts, rather than courts-martial, include such violent crimes as homicide and crimes that service members committed before joining the military.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It looks like the U.S. wants South Korea to play a larger role in space policy:

Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Park In-ho has signed a deal with the chief of the U.S. space operations and agreed to form a joint consultative body on space policy to strengthen cooperation, his office said Sunday.

During his visit to the Air Force Space Command in Colorado, Park signed a memorandum of understanding with Gen. John Raymond on the formation of a joint space policy consultative body on Friday (U.S. time), becoming official partners in space security cooperation.

The Air Force plans to further boost cooperation with the U.S. space force, including exchanging information, through the consultative body.

Park also held a bilateral meeting with the command chief, Gen. James Dickinson, and agreed to strengthen partnership on sharing information on space surveillance, as well as improving joint space operations capabilities, such as missile defense.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Here is the latest on the ongoing CCPT exercise:

South Korean troops conducting a joint, computer-simulated exercise with their American counterparts were all vaccinated and tested for COVID-19 before training began, a military official said Monday. 

A South Korean Ministry of National Defense official speaking on the customary condition of anonymity told Stars and Stripes that due to service members being in close proximity with each other, “it was very important for all of them to get vaccinated.”

The two countries are conducting a combined command-post training Aug. 16 to 26. Rather than a large-scale field exercise involving thousands of combat troops, this exercise will primarily focus on computer simulations.

U.S. Forces Korea spokesman Col. Lee Peters, citing the command’s policy, did not comment on whether American forces participating in the joint training were all vaccinated. 

However, Peters said USFK “can reassure you that we remain aligned with [the defense ministry] on aggressive COVID mitigation measures including conducting training with minimal essential personnel and in distributed locations.”

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but the most interesting thing I read in the article was that 93% of the 550,000 ROK troops have received the vaccine though it is voluntary.

This ROK soldier just came short of earning a mandatory military service exemption:

A South Korean high jumper hoping to win a medal at the Tokyo Olympics and qualify for an exemption from his country’s mandatory military service may earn some extra vacation days instead.

Pfc. Woo Sang-hyeok, 25, of the Korea Armed Forces Athletic Corps, placed fourth in the men’s high jump category after clearing a 2.35-meter bar. That performance broke South Korea’s previous record of 2.34 meters, or 7.7 feet, set in 1997.

Higher jumpers from Qatar, Italy and Belarus edged out Woo with their 2.37-meter jumps in the final round. The Olympic record for the event is 2.39 meters and was achieved by American Charles Austin in 1996, according to the International Olympic Committee’s website.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.

Here is a new drone capability the ROK military has just decided to purchase:

An attack drone equipped with six 40-millimeter grenade launchers will be piloted by the military in the first half of next year, according to the state arms procurement agency on Tuesday.  
   
The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) said in a June 3 press release that it signed a contract with two companies to purchase grenade-launching drones and small modular drones equipped with the latest technologies through a rapid pilot acquisition project system and to test-run the models in the first half of next year.  
   
The contracts with ONC Tech, which will provide the grenade-launching drones to the Army, and Preneu, which will furnish the small modular drones to the Navy and Air Force, are worth 662 million won ($576,600) and 1.71 billion won, respectively.  
  

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Note to senior leaders in the ROK military, the days of getting away with sexual harassment and other sex crimes is clearly over:

Military prosecutors indicted an Army general for alleged sexual molestation of a female subordinate, officials said Tuesday.

The brigadier general was accused of attempting physical contact with the female officer at a karaoke bar after a dinner with his subordinates in late June.

Upon a report by the victim, he was immediately relieved of his duties and arrested earlier this month.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

The Korea Herald has a good in-depth look at what happened with the ROK Navy ship that had most of its crew become infected with the coronavirus:

A seaman first exhibited cold-like symptoms on July 2, a day after the destroyer had made a four-day supply stop at a port. But he was treated with cold medicine and not tested for COVID-19, even though many others began to show similar symptoms. The medical staff had allegedly overlooked COVID-19 symptoms.

What made the outbreak more lethal was the wrong COVID-19 self-test kits Cheonghae packed upon leaving Korea. The unit left with antibody test kits, which take much longer time to detect infection than antigen test kits. It was just plain mistake, the Navy admitted.

“It was days later when we brought in local medical specialists to administer the industry-standard PCR tests,” one Cheonghae officer said, adding his unit began to enforce strict quarantine procedures after the test, which found the first six COVID-19 patients.

That was the first case of infection, which Cheonghae confirmed on July 15, and three days later, the military flew aircraft to airlift the entire crew back home. Many service members who had tested negative for COVID-19 using self-test kits were believed to have been infected.

“We just dropped the ball there,” a military official said.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link, but there is a clearly a cover up going on within the ship because they are trying to blame contaminated food for infecting the ship. Passing of the coronavirus from surface contact or eating food has been found to be highly unlikely. The vast majority of people are infected by airborne contact with the virus. The crew is claiming they were not in contact with anyone during their 4-day port call in Oman which appears to be unlikely.

“It’s highly unlikely that it came from food. I suspect there may have been people-to-people contact, though the seamen deny there was,” he said, adding the crew should be honest with whom they had come into contact.

This case takes another tragic turn:

A suspect in the suicide death of an Air Force sexual abuse victim has been found dead at a military detention facility, a human rights group said Monday.

The senior master sergeant was indicted on charges of inflicting secondary harm and threatening retaliation against the master sergeant, surnamed Lee, who took her own life in May, three months after she was allegedly groped and suffered other abuse by a colleague of the same rank.

“The senior master sergeant was found unconscious at 2:55 p.m. Sunday and transferred to a civilian hospital but later died,” the Center for Military Human Rights Korea, a nongovernmental organization, said.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.