To Call or Not to Call North Korea a Major Enemy: That Is the Problem

The Defense Ministry has decided at their 2004 Project Promotion Meeting to devise a draft of a defense white paper and publish it in May. The participants at the meeting include members of the army higher than lieutenant.

The Ministry was in the process of writing a draft for the paper but has not decided whether or not to call North Korea a “major enemy.”

The Ministry publicly responded to North Korea’s remark that “Seoul will be full of fire if the war begins” in its eighth working-level meeting in March of 1994 to discuss exchanging special envoys by referring to “North Korea, our major enemy’s realistic militaristic threats.”

Since the publication of the defense white paper in 2000, North Korea had protested the term “major enemy,” and the conflict between conservatives and progressives has grown. The Ministry then cancelled the publication of the paper in 2001, changing the publication system to a biannual base. Also, the ministry substituted the paper with a brochure titled “1998-2002 National Defense Policy” in 2002.

“With the growth of our military power, we do not need to limit our major enemy as North Korea,” said an official in the Defense Ministry. “However, the change in the concept will weaken the anti-enemy morale of the soldiers and give rise to the split of public opinion.”

The Ministry intended to not call North Korea as major enemy but fully explain North Korean militaristic threats; they have chosen to reconsider the decision since some pointed out that young soldiers’ sense of security toward North Korea is weakening.

The army held “Workshops to Establish Anti-enemy Spirits” with hundreds of officers on February 9. “There are still worries regarding flourishing websites praising North Korea and the false sense of security of some of the intelligentsia,” said officer Chung Hoon, who participated at the workshop, adding, “The army has decided to designate this year as the ‘Year of Anti-enemy Spirit Establishment’ and strengthen security education offered to soldiers.”

“National opinion can be split again in regard to publishing the paper, so the ministry is reconsidering the publishing from the beginning,” said ministry spokesperson Nam Dae-yeon.

Ho-Won Choi bestiger@donga.com