Deterrence, National Resilience, and the Dangerous Illusion of Stability
By In-Bum CHUN, retired Lieutenant General ROKA
For more than seventy years, the alliance between the Republic of Korea and the United States has remained one of the most successful security partnerships in modern history. Forged in war and sustained through sacrifice, the alliance prevented renewed conflict on the Korean Peninsula, enabled South Korea’s rise from devastation into a major economic and technological power, and contributed significantly to stability in Northeast Asia.
Today, however, the alliance faces a strategic environment fundamentally different from the one that existed during the Cold War or even the early post-Cold War era.
North Korea is now a nuclear-armed state with advancing missile capabilities, cyber warfare capacity, special operations forces, and expanding military cooperation with Russia. China continues to challenge the regional balance of power throughout the Indo-Pacific. The war in Ukraine has demonstrated that large-scale industrial warfare between states remains possible and that ammunition stockpiles, production capacity, logistics, and national endurance matter far more than many modern societies assumed.
At the same time, the United States faces growing global responsibilities stretching across Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific simultaneously. Under these conditions, assumptions that once underpinned the U.S.-ROK alliance must now be examined honestly. One of the greatest strategic dangers facing South Korea today is not simply North Korea itself, but the growing gap between perception and reality within South Korean society regarding national security and military preparedness.
Among many conservatives in South Korea, there remains a deeply rooted assumption that the United States will ultimately protect South Korea from any existential threat, as it has in the past. During earlier decades, such confidence was understandable. American military dominance was overwhelming, and South Korea’s own military and economy were still developing. However, the strategic environment has changed dramatically.
The United States remains the world’s most powerful military force, but it is also increasingly stretched by multiple global commitments and strategic competition with China. American support for South Korea will remain important and substantial, but it cannot be treated as an automatic or unlimited guarantee detached from political realities, operational constraints, and broader global priorities.
An alliance functions best when both partners understand strategic reality clearly rather than relying upon assumptions formed under entirely different geopolitical conditions. At the same time, many progressives within South Korea have often approached North Korea primarily as a political and diplomatic problem rather than as an enduring military threat. Dialogue and engagement are important tools, but minimizing the military dimension of the North Korean challenge risks creating dangerous complacency.
North Korea remains one of the most heavily armed states in the world. Its conventional military capabilities are frequently underestimated because of its economic weakness and aging equipment. This is a serious mistake.
North Korea does not require technological superiority to create catastrophic damage during the opening stages of conflict. Geography, mass fires, hardened underground infrastructure, missile saturation capability, and political willingness to absorb casualties continue to provide Pyongyang with dangerous conventional options.
The Seoul metropolitan area remains vulnerable to large-scale artillery attack. North Korea maintains enormous quantities of tube and rocket artillery positioned near the Demilitarized Zone. It also fields one of the world’s largest special operations forces designed for infiltration, sabotage, and disruption during crises. Its missile inventory continues to improve in range, survivability, and operational flexibility. Economic backwardness should not be confused with military irrelevance.
The war in Ukraine has also demonstrated something many analysts previously ignored: North Korea retains substantial military production capacity. While many advanced nations struggled to sustain artillery ammunition output during prolonged combat operations, North Korea proved capable of supplying large quantities of conventional munitions to Russia. This carries important implications beyond the Korean Peninsula.
North Korea should no longer be viewed solely as a local security problem. It increasingly possesses the ability to export instability, ammunition, missiles, drones, cyber capabilities, and asymmetric warfare expertise to states and actors hostile to the international order. In an era of prolonged regional conflicts and expanding authoritarian cooperation, North Korea’s military-industrial role may become increasingly significant.
Yet despite these realities, many South Koreans increasingly perceive North Korea as either manageable or secondary. Some point to international military ranking systems such as Global Firepower, which often place South Korea among the world’s strongest militaries. Such rankings, however, can create misleading confidence if interpreted superficially. Military strength cannot be measured simply by counting tanks, aircraft, ships, or manpower.
Combat effectiveness depends upon readiness, logistics, command integration, sustainment capacity, ammunition stockpiles, realistic training, industrial resilience, and the willingness of society itself to endure wartime sacrifice. The war in Ukraine demonstrated clearly that modern warfare consumes extraordinary quantities of ammunition, fuel, spare parts, drones, and trained personnel. It places enormous pressure upon national industry, logistics systems, command structures, and political cohesion.
South Korea possesses highly capable personnel, advanced technology, and an impressive defense industry. However, military modernization must be evaluated not merely through acquisition programs or defense budget increases, but through actual wartime sustainability and operational preparedness.
Recent South Korean administrations, both progressive and conservative, increased defense spending significantly. However, a substantial portion of these increases emphasized personnel compensation, welfare improvements, and quality-of-life initiatives rather than realistic large-scale training, reserve readiness, ammunition stockpiles, and sustained warfighting capability. Improving soldier welfare is important. Throughout my military career, I consistently believed that leaders must properly feed, equip, train, and care for their soldiers. Morale matters greatly. But welfare alone does not create deterrence.
Efforts under progressive administrations to strengthen human rights protections within the military were understandable and, in some respects, necessary. However, implementation often weakened discipline, command authority, and standards enforcement without successfully establishing an equally effective culture of responsibility and accountability.
At the same time, conservative governments that traditionally emphasized military strength have also struggled to address these deeper structural problems meaningfully. The issue is broader than politics alone. South Korea’s military reflects South Korean society itself.
The growing crisis within South Korea’s educational system should therefore concern security planners as much as educators. The increasing number of elementary school teachers driven to suicide under intense social pressure reflects a deeper erosion of institutional authority, discipline, social trust, and respect for responsibility. These trends inevitably affect a conscription-based military.
Armed forces drawn from society cannot remain isolated from broader social transformation. A society experiencing declining institutional trust, weakening authority structures, and growing polarization will eventually see similar challenges emerge within its military culture.
South Korea also faces another profound long-term security threat: demographic collapse. South Korea’s extremely low birth rate represents not merely an economic or social issue, but a direct national security challenge. A shrinking population means a shrinking conscription pool, increasing pressure on reserve forces, greater economic burdens on younger generations, and growing difficulty sustaining military manpower over time.
Despite years of warnings and enormous financial expenditures, South Korea has yet to demonstrate the political consensus or structural reforms necessary to reverse this trend meaningfully. No advanced weapons system can indefinitely compensate for the gradual disappearance of the population required to sustain national power.
These realities also influence one of the alliance’s most politically sensitive issues: Wartime Operational Control, commonly known as OPCON. For many South Korean progressives, OPCON transition symbolizes sovereignty and national autonomy. However, many of those same political voices simultaneously assume that the United States will never truly leave the Korean Peninsula regardless of changing strategic conditions. This creates a dangerous strategic contradiction.
Demands for greater autonomy are not inherently unreasonable. But genuine autonomy also requires acceptance of greater responsibility, greater risk, and greater independent capability. As it stands, South Korea has yet to demonstrate the political consensus and strategic urgency necessary to confront these challenges fully
American policymakers increasingly focused on global strategic competition may not indefinitely maintain the same military posture or political assumptions that existed decades ago. South Korea must therefore prepare for a future in which alliance management requires greater realism and greater burden-sharing from both sides. For American policymakers, it is important to understand that South Korea’s internal debates regarding security are not merely ideological disagreements. They directly affect deterrence credibility. Any weakening of deterrence on the Korean Peninsula would carry consequences extending far beyond Korea itself, directly affecting regional credibility and the broader strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific. However, preserving that alliance requires more than ceremonial declarations or nostalgic references to past sacrifices. It requires realism.
Yet significant elements within South Korea’s progressive political establishment continue to prioritize engagement and conflict management over acknowledging the enduring military nature of the North Korean threat. South Korea must recognize that economic success and technological advancement alone do not guarantee military effectiveness or strategic resilience. The United States must recognize that excessive ambiguity regarding alliance commitment can weaken deterrence in regions facing immediate existential threats. Most importantly, both nations must understand that deterrence is never permanent. Peace survives only when potential adversaries believe that allied nations possess both the capability and the will to respond decisively under crisis conditions.
The Korean Peninsula remains dangerous not because war is inevitable, but because complacency has become increasingly common. History repeatedly shows that deterrence fails gradually before it fails suddenly. Preserving peace in Northeast Asia will therefore require realism, readiness, and strategic seriousness from both sides of the Pacific.
