Total Reviewing of National Defense Budget

Regarding the U.S. troop disposition, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) plans to totally review the budget to strengthen military readiness.

Park Jong-ki, the chief of Planning and Management Office of the MND stated on January 29, “We plan to draw up a defense budget in 2005 with a zero-base concept, deviating from following the custom of making up from the previous year’s budget as usual.”

A person from the MND explained, “It implies that we (must) completely re-examine the defense budget, focusing on managing military capacity and acquisition. This measurement is for the rapid strengthening of our defense system in consideration of changes of security situations on the Korean peninsula.”

In the meantime, the MND has arranged the budget and carried out various projects for strengthening military readiness each year as planned at the beginning of the projects. This time, the MND created a special promotion team with Korea Institute for Defense Analyses unprecedentedly and is now making the budget for next year.

Regarding the course of the future national defense budget, experts in military affairs point out the priorities: there needs to be an increase in fire power in accordance with relocation of American troops; the reinforcement of military intelligence for realizing self-reliance of national defense, and creating a budget with emphasis on naval and air forces instead of the land forces.

The MND has decided to conclude positively to go ahead with “the exchange agreement for data analyses of a weapon system” with the advanced countries for effective arms introduction as of this year. The MND considers that it is indispensable to introduce foreign weapons directly instead of by self-development of arms if the relocation of U.S. troops happens quicker than the strengthening of military readiness in the army.

bestiger@donga.com