[Opinion] No Global Hawks for Korea

The Global Hawk is an extreme-altitude unmanned scout plane that flies high like a hawk and catches every possible ground and aerial military information. It was first deployed in the U.S Air Force in 1998. It flies as far as 3,000km, stay at an altitude of 20 km for 36 hours, and can make inspections covering an area of 0.14 million km2, which is bigger than that of North Korea (0.12 million km2 ). It identifies objects as small as 30cm. The data collected is sent in real-time to the ground base through satellites in the form of images.

Global Hawk oversees the movements of terrorist groups, human traffickers, and pirate ships, in addition to military information such as the movements of arms and weapons. Had South Korea possessed a Global Hawk, it might have been able to avoid the shame of making mistakes of saying about the North’s missile test fire, “We are not sure whether it’s a satellite or a missile,” or, “We are not sure whether it will be launched or not.”

The price of one Global Hawk is 43 billion won. The problem is that we can’t buy one even if we are willing to pay. In June last year at a meeting of the U.S.-Korean Security Cooperation in Hawaii, South Korea requested the U.S to sell four of them but was rejected. South Korea badgered the U.S for a while, but was turned out all the same. It is said that this is a result of a disagreement between them, for the U.S wanted to have a joint control over the data collected while South Korea wanted to have independent control, but other interpretations say that the U.S feared the data flowing into North Korea. Meanwhile the U.S decided to sell Global Hawks to Japan, Australia and Singapore. It’s as if Global Hawk shows the current situation of U.S- Korea alliance.

President Roh Mu-hyeon, in his commemoration speech on Armed Forces Day last year, said, “We’ll set up a framework of self-defense system and regain of strategic control in five years.” The day before yesterday, the Ministry of Defense announced an ambitious plan to spend 151 trillion won from 2007 to 2011 to obtain self-defense ability. What merriment it would be only if we could have independent self defense. But what use is it to defend the nation after the breakup of U.S-Korea alliance? The pro-NK-anti U.S attitude of the government and some social sectors will only strain the South Korean citizenry.

Yook Jung-soo, Editorial Writer, sooya@donga.com