South Korea is living on a knife's edge,
caught between multiple flashpoints all threatening the next major global war.
South Korea is a nation of 51 million people, and unlike its northern's cousin is a major
economic player on the world stage. However, the nation has the bad luck of sitting right in
the middle of the most dangerous geopolitical region in the entire world. This has prompted
South Korea to prepare to be ground zero for what could end up being World War III-
but South Korea's military and society both are not ready for such a conflict.
2023 will mark the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Korean War- or at least of the
signing of the cease fire, as both nations are technically still at war with eachother. The
peninsula remains fraught with tensions, and both side's militaries are on tripwire alert,
ready at a moment's notice to begin a war paused nearly a century ago.
All across the DMZ, North Korean and South Korean forces face off against each other,
with both sides having quick reaction forces ready to roll just a few miles away. Thousands
of artillery pieces hold each other under threat, but it's Pyongyang who has most of the advantages.
In 2006, North Korea completed its first successful underground nuclear test. For a moment,
the world feared war as it was thought that the United States would immediately respond
with an invasion of the North. However, rather than pursue military action,
diplomacy and sanctions were used instead, but increasingly deteriorating relations between North
Korean and the world only encouraged Pyongyang to continue developing more nuclear weapons.
To be fair, giving up its nuclear program was never an option for North Korea. The
nation had learned very well the fate of other rogue leaders who fell before US
forces. For North Korea, nuclear weapons were a guarantee of national survival,
a bargaining chip to fend off any US invasion. But they also allowed the nation to hold at
threat it's two regional rivals- Japan and South Korea. Nuclear weapons meant bargaining power,
and the North was not going to give that up no matter the cost to itself or its economy.
The security situation on the peninsula significantly worsened due to several incidents in
the 2010s, including the sinking of a South Korean naval vessel by a North Korean submarine. As Kim
Jong Un and American president Donald Trump took to Twitter to make nuclear threats against each
other and brag about the size of each other's red buttons, South Korea was caught in the crossfire.
There was a small streak of optimism as President Trump and Kim Jong Un agreed to meet for talks,
the first held between an American president and a North Korean leader. However, the talks were
doomed from the start, as North Korea was always unwilling to end its nuclear program. Instead,
Kim Jong manipulated President Trump in order to score significant political points back home,
and the event solidified Kim Jong's position as the supreme leader of the
country as propaganda touted his victory in forcing America to the negotiating table. For
a head of state surrounded by numerous senior officials with eyes on leadership position,
the talks were a strategic coup, helping push aside any possibility of an actual coup.
The situation eventually worsened once more with North Korean tests of ballistic missiles
over South Korean and Japanese air space. Now relations with North Korea are rapidly
approaching an all-time low as South Korea rapidly works to develop a three-axis plan to counter any
North Korean hostility. This plan relies on neutralizing North Korean kill-chain assets,
eliminating the North Korean leadership in a depreciation strike, and bolstering air and
missile defense to neutralize any North Korean ballistic missile attacks. Weapons such as
the F-35 and the Hyunmoo-5 ballistic missile are cornerstones of the plan, with the latter able to
deliver a warhead 100 meters underground with the goal of destroying North Korean command bunkers.
But North Korea is not South Korea's only threat, as the nation faces
an increasingly belligerent China. China's stated ambitions is to remove
the United States as the preeminent military, political, and economic power in Southeast Asia,
and South Korea is stuck right in the middle of a growing cold war between the two powers.
China is a strong supporter of North Korea, and its only real ally. It's
thanks to China and its exports into the country that North Korea remains afloat,
allowing the nation to continue defying international sanctions to operate its
nuclear program. North Korea is China's 'useful idiot', as the nation is a significant thorn in
America's side and poses a strategic vulnerability for the US and its Pacific allies in case of
war. The United States and Japan, who would inevitably be allied in a war against China,
could not simply ignore the North Korean threat while prosecuting a war with China,
forcing them to divert some of their resources to deter the hermit kingdom from acting out of line.
China is also very interested in ensuring that no reunification happens between the two countries,
at least not a South-led unification. The last thing that China wants is a democratic Korean
peninsula, as it would inevitably be aligned with the United States and the west thus extennding the
US’ influence in the region. This would also place a US ally and yet another liberal democracy right
on its doorstep, posing not just a military threat but a political one as well as Chinese people,
increasingly dissatisfied with the Chinese Communist Party, look to their neighbors and
are inspired to yearn for democracy. Simply put, while South Korea wants no confrontation with it's
much larger neighbor, China will work as hard as possible to ensure that Korean unification
fails- and if the United States is truly expelled from the region, then reunification led by the
north, and inevitably by force, is almost certain to be on China's agenda. Without
US military presence in the region, China will no longer have liberal democracies as its neighbors.
Whether South Koreans want it or not, China is one of their gravest threats to national security.
The war in Ukraine though spiked tensions in Southeast Asia as the conflict put a
laser focus on China's ambitions in Taiwan. Chinese president Xi Jinping,
who has in effect guaranteed he will remain leader of China for life, has explicitly
stated that reunification with Taiwan will happen soon, either by choice or by force. To this end,
the Chinese navy has exploded in size recently, with the nation putting more
vessels to sea every year than the United States- and showing no inclination to stop anytime soon.
As Taiwan produces most of the world's semiconductors and advanced microchips, taking the
island nation would put China in control of nearly the entire global supply of advanced electronic
components. This would give China overwhelming influence nearly everywhere in the world, in
effect amounting to almost veto-like powers over a nation's internal politics. If any nation dares
act out against Chinese interests, then China simply turns off the tap and that nation's economy
crumbles as it's cut off from the components needed for a modern technological economy.
However, China taking Taiwan would also allow it to break the US's first island chain containment
strategy, enacted during the Cold War to contain communist forces in the Pacific. This would allow
China to leverage its navy on South Korea, who would no longer be able to rely on the US navy
for protection. As a nation incredibly dependent on overseas trade, South Korea
has a vested interest in the current freedom of navigation enjoyed by all nations and underwritten
by the power of the United States navy and its allies. With the US pushed out of the region,
South Korea's vital economic lifelines would be under the direct control of China, who
has repeatedly shown it's ready to use force and intimidation to enforce its will on the high seas.
To make matters worse for South Korea, Donald Trump's term as president of
the United States led to a global crisis of faith in American leadership. Long viewed as
a guarantor of global stability through its vast network of alliances and partnerships,
Donald Trump's isolationist tendencies and preference for autocrats shook global confidence
in America as an ally of the current democratic world order. While he is no longer president,
his legacy lives on as it reverberates across domestic American politics. Current American
president Joe Biden has reiterated America's commitments to the global order, and his actions
supporting Ukraine have helped restore some confidence in the US, but the highly volatile
nature of American elections means that the world is unsure of America's future reliability.
As the European Union has done, South Korea is now considering what its own future looks like if the
United States decides it’s no longer interested in the stability of the western Pacific.
Things aren't great on the homefront either, and despite efforts to improve readiness,
South Korea is increasingly incapable of standing up to its future security challenges.
Domestic politics are even more partisan and divisive than America's own at the moment,
with a deep divide between South Korea's two main political parties
that results in legislative gridlock. So far, current ROK president, Yoon Suk Yeol,
has seen much of his attempts at legislation and reform blocked by the opposing party who
controls the national assembly. The end result is that South Korea is currently unable of enacting
wide sweeping reforms desperately needed to prepare to meet the security challenges it faces.
President Yoon Suk Yeol has worked to strengthen the South Korean-US alliance, but the nation's
own military is in an increasingly worsening strategic picture. With great focus placed on
high technology assets like new planes, missiles, and ships, the ROK army has been neglected to a
degree, with its numbers shrinking over the years. This is a significant problem, because
with over a million North Korean troops just over the border, it's the army who will be tasked with
stopping an enemy assault- something it can't do if it doesn't have the numbers required. Purchases
of modern equipment for ground forces have also been lackluster compared to investments elsewhere,
and now a deal to supply Poland with tanks means that South Korean industry will be feeding a
foreign market rather than its own military, taking even longer to modernize its ground
forces. This is a trade-off that South Korea sees as having acceptable risk, as selling tanks to
Poland allows the nation to have a toehold in the European defense market. However, it relies on the
hope that war doesn't break out anytime soon on the peninsula, an increasingly dire proposition.
The ROK has also faced significant challenges in recruiting for its military, with a youth
that's increasingly disinterested in military service. Conscription in South Korea means that
all youth have to serve between 18 and 21 months, depending on the military branch,
but few choose to pursue the military as a career. This leaves South Korea in the
dire position of having a dwindling number of professional soldiers, the consequences
of which are in full display by Russia inside of Ukraine right now. To make matters worse,
South Korea has one of the most rapidly aging populations in the developed world,
which not only shrinks the available manpower pool for both military and industry, but also
increases budgetary strain as South Korea has to provide for an ever increasing number of elderly
citizens kept afloat by a shrinking work force. No fancy new military technology can reverse
this trend- though the ROK is increasingly looking at automation and AI to help solve
some of its manpower problems in this arena. The future is fraught with dangers for South
Korea. Its continued independence, and democracy, greatly depends on its ability
to deter North Korean aggression and strengthen its ties to the United States, Japan, and NATO.