S. Korea’s Defense Efforts Fail to Pass U.S. Muster

A meeting of top U.S. and South Korean defense officials went off smoothly this week, but just out of sight lurked an unsettling question: Has Seoul grown complacent about the immediate threat from North Korea and too worried about the power rivalry it sees ahead with Japan?

While official conversations here between U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and his counterparts centered on what the 1.2-million-member North Korean army might do next, some U.S. officials fear that the South Koreans may be leaving the Americans to do too much of the worrying about Pyongyang’s still-deadly forces.

The United States has been leaning on the South Koreans to amass more of the defensive weapons that would help them defend against a huge artillery and missile attack from the North. Seoul has been moving gradually to do some of that. But some Americans see them spending too much effort assembling the kind of military that will be more in need if the two Koreas reunify and thus re-scramble the Asian power puzzle: big warships, submarines and long-range aircraft.

South Korea has taken some steps to strengthen its forces against the North, “but we’d like them to do more,” one senior American official said this week.

Indeed, Seoul’s military efforts are “a source of considerable irritation in the Clinton administration, on Capitol Hill and in the professional military,” said Nicholas Eberstadt, an analyst with the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington think tank.

Some U.S. officials believe that Seoul is spending less than it should on defense, considering that its very existence could be at risk in a thrust from the North. About two-thirds of North Korea’s troops are hard by the South Korean border, and defense analysts assume that they could pound nearby Seoul for at least several days in an all-out assault.

South Korean defense spending, which was 6% of gross domestic product in 1980, had fallen to 4% by 1990 and now is about 3%. The United States spends 4% of its gross domestic product on the military.

One unsettling sign that the South Koreans are less ready than they should be for a North Korean attack came last September, when a submarine from the North pierced Seoul’s defenses and ran aground in the South. The incursion came to authorities’ attention only because a taxi driver happened on the scene.

If an major attack came “completely out of the blue, the South could be caught a little lacking,” said Michael Mazarr, an analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, another Washington think tank.

To correct this, the United States wants Seoul to buy more Patriot surface-to-air missiles and so-called counter-battery radar systems, which enable defenders to return precision fire on artillery as soon as they are fired on. Despite North Korea’s current economic tailspin, it has continued to pile up artillery and missile launchers near the Demilitarized Zone that separates the two countries--about 32,000 in all, the U.S. Army estimates.

But the South Koreans have been moving slowly on an expected $1-billion purchase of the U.S.-made Patriots and were even toying with the idea of buying Russian SA-12 missile systems instead. After an indignant comment from the visiting Cohen, South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tong Chin indicated on Thursday that his government intends to stick with the American product after all.

South Korea’s hesitation to spend more to counter the North Korean threat is born partly of financial concern because the country’s strong economy has recently sputtered, analysts say.

Many in Seoul take the attitude that, in a fight against Pyongyang, they could rely on their longtime sponsor and that, indeed, the 37,000 Americans here are better equipped to handle the North.

Though Seoul is now a proud medium-sized power, with a usually humming $400-billion-a-year economy, “there remains a vestigial dependency impulse,” analyst Eberstadt said. “In a crisis, they think of the Americans.”

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In addition, many in the South are simply calculating that a North Korean attack--despite Pyongyang’s bluster and recent troop exercises--is a low risk, compared to the likelihood that Seoul will someday have to square off against the Japanese, a historical adversary and rival for regional power.

Even though Japan’s military has only a defensive capability, its annual spending of nearly $50 billion makes it “a potential military power of great significance,” analyst Taeho Kim wrote in Brassey’s Mershon American Defense Annual.

And the Koreans have not forgotten Japan’s decades-long occupation of their country in this century.

The South Koreans believe that they need to start preparing today for the military situation of 10 to 15 years from now, analyst Mazarr said.

“In that time,” he said, “there’s some expectation that North Korea will simply cease to exist.”