South Korea needs to “secure its military strength and the weapons to incapacitate North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, defend against an all-out war and restrain local provocations,” according to Lee Sang Woo, chair of the Presidential Commission for National Security Review.
Giving the keynote speech at a seminar co-sponsored by Korea Defense Forum (KODEF) and Northeast Asia Peace and Security Forum of the National Assembly at the War Memorial of Korea in Seoul this morning, Lee also asserted, “As long as North Korea refuses to give up its WMD, South Korea, which decided not to obtain WMD of its own accord, cannot help facing a military inferiority.”
He emphasized, “Only when it possesses the ability to attack targets precisely with non-nuclear weapons and incapacitate North Korea’s WMD ability before it is used will South Korea, which maintains a non-nuclear military policy, be able to head off North Korea’s military edge.”
Lee explained further, “If South Korea shows the decisive will to crush North Korea’s means of and intention to attack before its command and control systems and means of attack can start operating, it will refrain from provocations.”
He added, “South Korea’s national defense policy should be changed from ‘passive defense tactics’ to ‘active deterrence tactics.’ Employing ‘active deterrence’ as our new strategic instruction, we need to break North Korea’s will to provoke and stop them even thinking of it.”
Regarding talk of reducing the mandatory military service period, Lee went on, “Considering the fact that North Korea has more than twice as many deployed ground forces as us, a reduction of our military forces is not advisable.”
Therefore, he concluded, “We must maintain the current duration of military service until that time (when South Korea has the ability to halt North Korea’s WMD attacks).”
