Here is the latest on the debate about women being added to the mandatory service requirement in South Korea:
South Korea has again been thrown into a debate over whether women should be drafted into the military alongside men, with political and social circles calling for its serious consideration amid chronically low birth rates.
One of the recent triggers was an online petition demanding female conscription on Cheong Wa Dae’s website.
The other was the new book, “Park Yong-jin’s Political Revolution,” published this week by the eponymous lawmaker of the ruling Democratic Party (DP). In it, Park, a candidate for the March 2022 presidential election, suggested that the country replace its draft with a volunteer military system and require both women and men to receive basic military training for up to 100 days.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It will be interesting to see if the new radars really do get fielded in 2027:
South Korea will develop an indigenous long-range radar for air defense in order to replace old ones brought in from abroad, the arms procurement agency said Monday.
The Defense Acquisition Program Administration signed a 46 billion won (US$41 million) deal with LIG Nex1 Co. for the four-year development project with a plan to begin its deployment in 2027, the agency said.
The radar would be capable of monitoring and identifying aircraft inside the Korea Air Defense Identification Zone (KADIZ) and sending information to the Air Force’s Master Control and Reporting Center for defense operations.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It looks like South Korea is still working out the kinks with their new type 214 submarine:
A defective inverter module was found to have been the cause of an error message that led to a new 214-class submarine having to be towed in the East Sea earlier this month, Navy officials said Sunday.
The Navy decided to inspect all 214-class submarines to ensure that no such problems would happen again, after finding that a defect was reported in the same part of another submarine of the same type two years ago too, officials said.
The latest incident happened on Jan. 23 when the submarine was in waters off the southeastern port city of Pohang. An error message popped up in the vessel’s propulsion system, and officials decided to get the sub towed by a civilian vessel.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
South Korea might rank higher than North Korea, but South Korea has spread their defense spending to include capabilities not needed to counter North Korea. Meanwhile the Kim regime is focused their military solely on war with South Korea:
South Korea has ranked sixth in global military strength.
According to 2021 list from the U.S. ranking agency Global Firepower, South Korea ranks sixth out of 138 countries, the same as last year, with a PowerIndex score of zero-point-1621.
North Korea dropped three slots from 25th to 28th this year.
The GFP ranking is based on each nation’s potential war-making capability across land, sea and air fought by conventional means. It utilizes over 50 individual factors to determine a PowerIndex score with categories ranging from military might and financials to logistical capability and geography.
KBS World Radio
You can read more at the link.
There is a number of C2, ISR, and missile defense capabilities that the ROK should be pursuing if they really want to take over OPCON from USFK, but instead they want to build an aircraft carrier:
The military has decided to push ahead with its plan to develop an indigenous light aircraft carrier despite questions over its effectiveness.
Korea Times
The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) decided on the need for the aircraft carrier during a meeting presided over by JCS Chairman Gen. Won In-choul last Wednesday.
The decision came despite the project budget being largely reduced. The Defense Acquisition Program Administration (DAPA) had initially planned to spend 10.1 billion ($9.3 million) won this year for the basic design of the carrier but the Ministry of Economy and Finance reduced the amount to only 100 million won for contracts covering research and holding debates.
The military is planning to establish basic strategies for the development project and complete a feasibility study this year, and begin basic design work next year to finally secure one light aircraft carrier with a 30,000 tons standard displacement and 40,000 tons full-load displacement by 2033. The military is also expected to push ahead with acquiring F-35B stealth fighter jets which can be carried by the vessel.
You can read more at the link, but I believe this has more to do with keeping up with the Japanese than off setting any capability from North Korea.
This seems more like PR than a major policy change:
The military will provide vegetarian and Muslim enlistees with a vegan diet excluding any meat and ham starting next year, the defense ministry said Sunday.
From February, prospective draftees will be asked to mark if they are a vegetarian when they take physical examinations, the ministry said.
Two columns marked as “vegetarian” in both Korean and English will be available on the form.
Such personal information will be sent to the unit that the enlistees will serve in, allowing for a systematic ration program for vegetarian and Muslim soldiers.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link, but currently in the ROK military only two soldiers have identified themselves as Muslim and vegetarian.
Some more changes are coming to the ROK military:
The defense ministry said Wednesday it will complete reducing the mandatory military service period to 18 months by next year as planned as part of a series of reform projects under way to make the military “smaller and stronger.”
During a meeting on defense reform presided over by Defense Minister Suh Wook, officials said the military is on course to cut the service period for Army draftees to 18 months by December 2021, according to the ministry.
All able-bodied South Korean men must carry out compulsory military service for about two years in a country that faces North Korea across a heavily fortified border.
Other reform measures include raising the proportion of female service members and decreasing the number of generals with one to four stars.
The number of female service members stood at 7.4 percent this year, 0.6 percentage point higher than the previous year.
Among 76 general positions subject to reduction, 46 have been cut so far, the ministry said.
Yonhap
You can read more at the link.
It is amazing how long it has been taking for the Koreans to figure out how to domestically produce one of their key defense systems:
South Korea’s arms acquisition agency has decided to equip third batch of K2 Black Panther main battle tanks with a German transmission system, a part of the tank’s power pack that includes a locally developed engine.
The decision is a blow to a 15-yearlong effort to replace the German RENK transmission system with an indigenous one, which local industry expected would pave the way for exporting the tank. (…….)
The failure in local transmission development has also caused setbacks for the tank’s deployment in the South Korean Army.
The Black Panther was co-developed by the state-run Agency for Defense Development and Hyundai Rotem, a defense business arm of Hyundai Motor, to replace M48 Patton tanks and earlier models of K1 tanks that have been service since the 1980s. Prototypes were unveiled in 2007.
Mass production of the first 100 units was approved in 2011, with deployment scheduled for the following year, but the effort was delayed over a faulty engine and a lack of progress on a locally produced transmission. The government then decided to use the German-made power pack consisting of the MTU 883 diesel engine and RENK transmission system for the first batch.
The tanks entered service in 2014, and in that same year, local developers announced they succeeded in developing a 1,500-horsepower power pack that could be installed on the second batch of 100 tanks. However, the deployment of the second batch also faced delays, as the S&T Dynamics-made transmission system repeatedly failed to prove its reliability and durability under transmission production standards, which require a system to run without issue for 320 hours. The second batch of K2s were eventually delivered in 2019.
Defense News
You can read more at the link, but ROK Heads may remember that South Korea has been trying to export the K2 to Turkey. Due to the various delays, Turkey decided to instead conduct a technology transfer with South Korea to develop their own tank.
