Category: ROK Military

I don’t like the alternative military service for celebrities especially since a number of celebrities went and completed their military service and successfully restarted their careers afterwards:

Busan Mayor Park Heong-joon has proposed allowing the members of K-pop superband BTS to replace their military duties with alternative service as public relations ambassadors for the city’s bid to host the 2030 World Expo, officials said Thursday.

The government formally appointed the septet last month as a PR ambassador in charge of promoting the Expo bid, for which Busan is competing with cities in Italy and Saudi Arabia. 

Mayor Park recently made the proposal asking the presidential office to grant BTS the alternative military service benefit currently available to athletes and artists who helped elevate national prestige or cultural advancement, according to officials.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is good to see the ROK military continuing to take advantage of the world class training offered at the National Training Center:

About 150 South Korean Army commandoes will leave for the United States later this month for joint training with the U.S. Army at the National Training Center (NTC) in California, officials said Sunday.

The special forces troops from a front-line Army corps will conduct joint exercises at the Fort Irwin training center for about a month as part of an annual training program the two countries have carried out since 2020 to establish a firm readiness posture.

It was the second time this year the two countries have held joint exercises at the NTC after some 100 officers from the Army’s Special Warfare Command staged special warfare exercises with the U.S. military at the training ground between June and July.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is good to see this trilateral cooperation restarting again after it was stopped when former President Moon Jae-in was elected:

 South Korea, the United States and Japan will kick off a combined ballistic missile defense exercise in waters off Hawaii this week, informed sources said Sunday, amid their stepped-up security coordination against North Korea’s evolving military threats.

The biennial Pacific Dragon exercise is scheduled to take place from Monday through Aug. 14, according to them. In addition to the three countries, Australia and Canada will join the exercise in this year’s edition. 

Featuring the mobilization of eight warships and two aircraft, the exercise is aimed at enhancing cooperation among the participating countries in detecting, tracking and reporting ballistic missile targets. 

The exercise has been arranged as the defense chiefs of South Korea, the U.S. and Japan agreed to reinforce their security coordination during their trilateral gathering on the margins of the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 11.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

It is good to see the ROK Army now increasing their training readiness that had been impacted by COVID restrictions:

The South Korean Army flexed its combat power during a large-scale air drill held at two Army facilities in Icheon and Yangpyeong in Gyeonggi Province on Monday.

A total of 34 helicopters, including 16 Apache Guardians, 13 Black Hawks and five Chinooks were mobilized for the largest-ever exercise of its kind conducted by the Army, simulating a scenario in which troops are required to infiltrate enemy territory by air and secure a target.

In the training, the Army’s key asset, the Apache attack helicopters, executed sharp descents after soaring vertically, a maneuver intended to minimize exposure to hostile fire.

The choppers also fired some 150 2-point-75 inch rockets and 450 rounds from a 30-millimeter machine gun in a display of firepower.

KBS World News

You can read more at the link.

It is good to see this change in tone from the ROK military:

 South Korea’s top military officer said Monday the country’s missile forces are capable of dealing a “fatal” blow to a potential enemy, in an apparent message of deterrence against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats.

In a meeting with reporters, new Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Kim Seung-kyum commented on his visit last week to a unit of the Army Missile Strategic Command, which he said was designed to deliver such a warning.

“As North Korea has undertaken various strategic provocations and is threatening the Republic of Korea … I thought I should send a different message to the enemy,” Kim said, referring to South Korea by its official name.

“Missiles that our Republic of Korea possesses are at a considerable level. I thought (the visit) carried and should carry a warning message that (South Korea) is capable of sending a fatal blow to the enemy,” he added.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

I think what President Yoon is preparing the ROK military for, is to strongly respond to a Cheonan sinking or Yeonpyeong Island shelling like provocation. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to this, but North Korea seems due to provoke something in the Yellow Sea which has been quiet for quite a while:

President Yoon Suk-yeol ordered the military on Wednesday to swiftly punish North Korea in case of provocations as he presided over a meeting of top commanders for the first time since taking office.

“(The president) ordered our military to swiftly and firmly punish North Korea in the event that it carries out a provocation,” his office said after Yoon’s meeting with the commanders from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps at the Gyeryongdae military headquarters, 160 kilometers south of Seoul.

“He stressed that it is the military’s mission to defend the people’s lives, property, territory and sovereignty at all costs, and that we must firmly show our resolve to do so,” the office said in a statement.

North Korea has carried out a series of short- to long-range missile tests since Yoon’s inauguration in May and showed signs of preparing for what would be its seventh nuclear test.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link.

Not only is this officer likely going to jail, but the cryptocurrency he received has dropped by more than half its value now:

A special operations officer in the South Korean army allegedly traded military secrets to a North Korean hacker in exchange for nearly $70,000 in cryptocurrency, according to a South Korean military affidavit.

The army captain, identified in the redacted affidavit only as Kim, his surname, was arrested April 6 and charged with violating the National Security Act, military prosecutors state in the document.

The allegations against Kim are “absolutely shameful,” said a former South Korean special forces officer and former commander of a joint support group.

“In my 19 year-career in the military, this is the first time I’ve heard this kind of news,” Lee Kwan Woo, a former commander in the Eighth Army’s U.S.-South Korea joint support group, told Stars and Stripes by phone Wednesday. “Special forces officers and noncommissioned officers are trained on security — all of those members are trained very seriously to keep security.”

Kim attended South Korea’s school of infantry in 2015, according to military records cited in the affidavit. He then served as a platoon leader for a reconnaissance company in 2016 and five years later became a company commander in the 13th Special Mission Brigade, according to Lee a special operations group specifically trained to capture or kill leaders in North Korea.

In March 2020, an unidentified former classmate approached Kim with an offer of money in exchange for military information for a third party, according to the affidavit. Kim declined the offer, saying such an act is illegal, the affidavit states.

Around six months later, Kim, now in financial straits due to online gambling, accepted his classmates’ offer, the affidavit said. The classmate introduced Kim to Boris, a man who claimed to be an ethnic Korean living in China.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link, but it is not surprising that the North Koreans were targeting someone with a bad gambling habit. It makes me wonder how they knew he had a bad gambling habit? Did they hack into the online gambling websites to monitor who has gambling problems that they might be able to exploit?

It will be interesting to see if South Korea agrees to this because they would indirectly be seen by Russia as supporting the Ukrainians with arms:

The South Korean government has been reviewing the export of artillery shells to Canada in a bid to help the country replenish its depleted weapons stocks sent to Ukraine. 

Canada recently asked if South Korea is able to export 100,000 rounds of 155 mm artillery ammunition through a diplomatic channel, a South Korean senior official at the Defense Ministry confirmed to The Korea Herald on Monday. 

The South Korean official said the government has not yet formally begun procedures to proceed with the export. But the military has been reviewing whether it is capable of supplying the artillery shells in light of its weapons stocks and readiness posture. 

Canada made the request to fill up its ammunition stocks which have been exhausted due to its lethal aid to war-torn Ukraine, according to the official.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

It will be interesting to see how this case continues to play out since it was sent back to the ROK military court. They could try and find some different article to punish them with:

South Korea’s Supreme Court on Thursday threw out a military court ruling that convicted two gay soldiers for having sex outside their military facilities, saying it stretched the reading of the country’s widely criticized military sodomy law.

The court’s decision to send the case back to the High Court for Armed Forces was welcomed by human rights advocates, who had long protested the country’s 1962 Military Criminal Act’s Article 92-6, which prohibits same-sex conduct among soldiers in the country’s predominantly male military.

The article prescribes a maximum prison term of two years for “anal intercourse” and “any other indecent acts” between military personnel. Following the Supreme Court’s full panel deliberation of its 13 justices, Chief Justice Kim Myeong-su said they concluded the provisions should not be applied to consensual sex between male service members that takes place outside military facilities during off-duty hours.

Stars & Stripes

You can read more at the link.