Abstract
Was South Korea able to deter or defend itself against a North Korean attack in the 1990s?1 Answers to the question are sharply divided between optimists, who see enough defensive capacity in the South, and alarmists, who view it as incapable of deterring or defeating a North Korean attack. Overall, the balance of the assessments is skewed in favor of the latter,2 although the body of optimist literature is small but growing steadily.3 The analysis presented in this chapter explicitly leaves out the U.S. military component in order to assess the pessimistic and optimistic conclusions on an equal footing, because the difference between the two results mainly from whether or not one includes the U.S. capability.4 The pessimists are pessimistic because they exclude U.S. support, whereas the optimists are optimistic because the Combined Forces Command (CFC) of the United States and South Korea, supplemented by forces deployed from overseas, has military power that is overwhelmingly superior to the North’s.5 Their opposite conclusions result directly from their opposite assumptions. To avoid this analytical pitfall, this chapter disaggregates the CFC’s capability and focuses on South Korea’s capability by itself.6
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Notes
Optimists: Stephen D. Goose, “The Comparative Military Capabilities of North Korean and South Korean Forces,” in The U.S.-South Korean Alliance: Time for a Change, ed. Doug Bandow and Ted Galen Carpenter (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1993), pp. 37–57;
Peter Hayes, Pacific Powderkeg: American Nuclear Dilemmas in Korea (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1991), pp. 153–167;
Tae-Hwan Kwak, “Military Capabilities of South and North Korea: A Comparative Study,” Asian Perspective 14, no.1 (1990): 113–143;
Thomas H. Moorer, “The Balance of Power in the Western Pacific,” in The Korean Peninsula: Prospects for Arms Reduction Under Global Detente, ed. William J. Taylor Jr., Young-Koo Cha, and John Q. Blodgett (Boulder: Westview, 1990), pp. 77–89;
Trevor N. Dupuy, “New Perspectives on the Security of Korea,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 1, no. 2 (1989): 199–216;
Young-Sun Ha, “The Korean Military Balance: Myth and Reality,” in The Future of South Korean-U.S. Security Relations, ed. William J. Taylor Jr., Young-Koo Cha, John Q. Blodgett, and Michael Mazarr (Boulder: Westview, 1989), pp. 89–101; and
Stephen Goose, “The Military Situation on the Korean Peninsula,” in Two Koreas—One Future? ed. John Sullivan and Roberta Foss (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1987), pp. 55–93. Alarmists: Ministry of National Defense, Defense White Paper, 1997–1998, www.mnd.go.kr/97whitepaper; “S. Korea President Warns Invasion by North More Likely,” AP-Dow Jones News Service, March 12, 1997;
Yu Seok-ryol, “North Korea’s Military Policy toward South Korea,” Vantage Point (Seoul) 18, no. 8 (August 1995): 41;
Defense Intelligence Agency, North Korea: The Foundations for Military Strength—Update 1995 (DIA, 1991), www.fas.org/irp/dia/product/knfms95;
Yoo Young Ock, “Fundamentals of and Prospects for Change in North Korea’s Military Policy,” East Asian Review 5, no. 2 (1993): 87–96;
Oh Kwan-Chi, “The Military Balance on the Korean Peninsula,” in Korean Peninsula, ed. Taylor et al., pp. 91–104; Chae-Hap Pak, “A Grand Strategy for Korea’s Defense,” Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 1, no. 2 (1989): 167–197;
Richard T. Detrio, Strategic Partners: South Korea and the United States (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1989);
Jong-Chun Baek, “Military,” in A Comparative Study of South and North Korea, ed. Moon-Hyun Choi (Seoul: National Unification Board, 1988), pp. 255–315;
Kyongsoo Lho, “The Military Balance in the Korean Peninsula,” Asian Affairs 19 (1988): 36–44; and
Larry A. Niksch, “The Military Balance on the Korean Peninsula,” Korea and World Affairs 10, no. 2 (1986): 253–277.
See, for example, I Yŏng-Ho, “Pukhan kunsaryŏkŭi haebu: wihyŏpŭi chongdowa sujun—nambuk kunsaryŏk kyunhyŏng p’yŏnggarŭl chungsimŭro [Analysis of North Korea’s Military Power: Degree and Level of Threat—with a Focus on Assessment of North-South Military Balance],” Chŏllyakyŏn’gu [Strategic Studies] 4, no. 3 (1997): 135–176;
Stuart K. Masaki, “The Korean Question: Assessing the Military Balance,” Security Studies 4, no. 2 (1994/95): 365–425;
David Kang, “Preventive War and North Korea,” Security Studies 4, no. 2 (1994/95): 330–363;
Nick Beldecos and Eric Heginbotham, “The Conventional Military Balance in Korea,” Breakthroughs 4, no. 1 (1995): 1–8; and
Michael O’Hanlon, “Stopping a North Korean Invasion: Why Defending South Korea Is Easier Than the Pentagon Thinks,” International Security 22, no. 4 (1998): 135–170.
On a close reading of the literature, almost all optimists bring in the American force to their analysis of military balance. The only exception so far is I Yŏng-Hŭi, who argues that South Korea’s military capability is superior to that of North Korea. See I Yŏng-Hŭi, “Nambukhan chŏnjaengnungnyok pigyoyon’gu: hanbando p’yŏnghwa t’odaeŭi kuch’ugŭl uihan mosaek [Comparative Study of South and North Korea’s War Capability: An Exploration to Establish a Foundation for Korean Peninsula’s Peace],” in Nambukhan kunbigyŏngjaenggwa kunch’uk [South-North Korea’s Arms Race and Disarmament], ed. Kyongnam University Far East Institute (Seoul: Kyongnam University Press, 1992), pp. 117–144.
For a brief, and critical, review of the methodologies, see Charles A. Kupchan, “Setting Conventional Force Requirements: Roughly Right or Precisely Wrong?” World Politics 41, no. 4 (1989): 536–578.
For ADE or WEI/WUV, see War Gaming Directorate, U.S. Army Concepts Analysis Agency, “Weapons Effectiveness Indices/Weighted Unit Values (WEI/WUV),” April 1974; and William P. Mako, U.S. Ground Forces and the Defense of Central Europe (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983), pp. 114–125. For updated figures, see
Joshua M. Epstein, Conventional Force Reductions: A Dynamic Assessment (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1990), appendix C, pp. 110–269. For TASCFORM, see
Michael O’Hanlon, The Art of War in the Age of Peace: U.S. Military Posture for the Post-Cold War World (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1992), pp. 66–67. For references on Lanchester and non-Lanchester models, see my footnotes 48 and 49.
For a more recent analysis of the military balance, see J. J. Suh, “Assessing the Military Balance in Korea,” Asian Perspective 28, no. 4 (2004): 63–88.
Blitzkrieg, a lightning war, is a strategy to defeat the defender by mobilizing large-scale armored formations (tanks) to effect deep strategic penetration(s). For a discussion on the blitzkrieg strategy, see John Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 35–43. I note that Mearsheimer’s definition of conventional deterrence is not consistent with the way “deterrence” is understood in strategic studies, which define it as a strategy of preventing an attack by a threat of overwhelming and disproportionate retaliation. Although I adopt Mearsheimer’s definition of deterrence, it should be taken to mean “defense by denial.” I thank Avery Goldstein for clarifying this point for me.
Geoffrey Blainey, The Causes of War, 3rd ed. (New York: Free Press, 1988), pp. 35–56.
A Japanese source notes a decline of 24.2 percent, while a British publication estimates, citing U.S. intelligence sources, a decrease of more than 50 percent. Yabuuchi Masao, “Kita Chosen no boeki, 1992” [North Korea’s Trade, 1992], in Kita Chosen no Keizai to boeki no tenbo [The Outlook for the Economy and Trade of North Korea] (Nihon Boeki Shinkokai [Japan Trade Promotion Association], 1993), p. 47; Barbara Starr, “North Korea’s Collapse Is Threat to Stability,” Jane’s Defense Weekly, June 12, 1996, p. 31.
As Edward Luttwak notes, “The loss of 50 kilometers might induce a collapse of public confidence in the South Korean government and demoralize the armed forces…. As a result, not surprisingly, South Korea’s theater-defense policy ignores the logic of strategy at the theater level and seeks to provide a preclusive (‘forward’) defense of [the] whole territory.” Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), pp. 114–115.
International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 1997/98 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 183–186.
Malcolm Chalmers and Lutz Unterseher, “Is There a Tank Gap? Comparing NATO and Warsaw Pact Tank Fleets,” International Security 13, no. 1 (1988): 23–45.
Andrea Matles Savada and William Shaw, eds., South Korea: A Country Study (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 284. See also John C. “Doc”
Bahnsen, “The Koreans Build Their Own Armor Force While the U.S. Army Fights Pentagon Bureaucrats,” in U.S.-Korean Security Relations: New Challenges and Opportunities (Seoul: Council on U.S.-Korean Security Studies, 1987), pp. 213–222.
David Miller, Modern Tanks and Fighting Vehicles (New York: Smithmark, 1992), pp. 66–69.
South Korea spent as much as 39 percent of its defense budget on force improvement in 1988, and between 30 percent and 40 percent per year in recent years. Republic of Korea, Ministry of National Defense, Defense White Paper, 1997–1998 (Seoul, 1998), appendix 10.
Posen makes this observation in the context of Central Europe. See Barry R. Posen, “Measuring the Central European Conventional Balance,” International Security 9, no. 3 (1984/85): 67–70; also
Posen, Inadvertent Escalation: Conventional War and Nuclear Risks (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 70–76.
John J. Mearsheimer, “Assessing the Conventional Balance: The 3:1 Rule and Its Critics,” International Security 13, no. 4 (1989): 54–87; and
Mearsheimer, “Why the Soviets Can’t Win Quickly in Central Europe,” International Security 7, no. 1 (1982): 139–175. For a critique of this argument, see
Richard K. Betts, “Conventional Deterrence: Predictive Uncertainty and Policy Confidence,” World Politics 37, no. 2 (1985): 164–179. Raj Gupta argues that victorious attackers need a force-to-force ratio of 1.74:1. See
Raj Gupta, Defense Positioning and Geometry: Rules for a World with Low Force Levels (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1993), p. 257. Joshua Epstein also suggests a ratio much below 3:1. See Epstein, Conventional Force Reductions, p. 58.
According to Dupuy’s model, the force strength of a unit in a prepared defensive situation is multiplied by a factor of 1.5. Its force strength is multiplied by a terrain factor of 1.55 for a rugged, difficult terrain. Finally its force is multiplied by a factor of 1.3, because its defensive posture reduces its vulnerability. Therefore, the strength of a unit is boosted by a multiplication of the three factors: 1.5 × 1.55 × 1.3 = 3. Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy, Numbers, Predictions, and War, 2nd ed. (Fairfax, VA: Hero Books, 1985); and
Dupuy, “Mythos or Verity? The Quantified Judgement Model and German Combat Effectiveness,” Military Affairs 50, no. 4 (1986): 204–210.
Figures are taken from Roy E. Appleman, South to the Naktong, North to the Yalu: (June–November 1950) (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1992), and converted into ADEs.
Chung Min Lee, “Holding the ‘Hollingsworth Line’: Conventional Deterrence in the Korean Peninsula,” in The U.S.-Korean Security Relationship: Prospects and Challenges for the 1990s, Harold C. Hinton et al. (New York: Pergamon-Brassey’s, 1988), p. 65.
Joseph S. Bermudez Jr., North Korean Special Forces (London: Jane’s, 1988), pp. 156–157.
Posen, Inadvertent Escalation, pp. 110–115; Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, pp. 181–182. For critiques of their argument, see Epstein, Conventional Torce Reductions, pp. 51–65; Eliot A. Cohen, “Toward Better Net Assessment,” International Security 13, no. 1 (1989): 66–72; and
Cohen, “Correspondence: Reassessing Net Assessment,” International Security 13, no. 4 (1989): 169–172.
Ralph N. Clough, Deterrence and Defense in Korea: The Role of U.S. Forces (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1976), p. 11.
General Richard G. Stilwell, “Commentary: The United States, Japan and the Security of Korea,” International Security 2, no. 3 (1977): 93; and
Charles A. Sorrels, Planning U.S. General Purpose Forces: Forces Related to Asia (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, June 1977), p. 36n7.
Most accounts put the North’s forward presence along the DMZ at 65 percent of its ground forces, which indicates that Pyongyang has to redeploy 35 percent of its forces to the front to fully utilize its military might in a blitzkrieg. For example, the 815th Mechanized Corps and the 820th Armored Corps are stationed about 100 km away from the western part of the DMZ. The 9th Mechanized Corps, headquartered at Kosan about 90 km from the eastern DMZ, have to travel approximately 80 km over high, rough mountains to get to the Ch’ŏrwŏn corridor. Two other mechanized corps, the 10th and 425th, are headquartered farther north, probably too far away to be deployed to the front (not to mention the possibility that the defensive missions to which they are likely assigned may keep them there). This deployment pattern can be understood only if we acknowledge that the North has defensive needs: it has to defend against a possible amphibious landing on its eastern and western coasts. (Estimates were made from Figure 11 in Andrea Matles Savada, ed., North Korea: A Country Study, 4th ed. [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1994], p. 222.) On the other hand, the South has most of its active forces along the DMZ: 19 of 21 infantry divisions and both the mechanized infantry divisions are forward deployed, while other units such as special forces brigades are likely to be near the DMZ. See Savada and Shaw, South Korea, p. 283.
For Posen’s model, see Posen, Inadvertent Escalation, appendix 3. For Epstein’s model, see Joshua M. Epstein, The Calculus of Conventional War: Dynamic Analysis without Lanchester Theory (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1985);
Epstein, Strategy and Force Planning: The Case of the Persian Gulf (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1987), appendix C; and Epstein, Conventional Force Reductions, appendix A. For a critique of Epstein’s model, see Mearsheimer, “Assessing the Conventional Balance”; and for Epstein’s response, see
Epstein, “The 3:1 Rule, The Adaptive Dynamic Model, and the Future of Security Studies,” International Security 13, no. 4 (1989): 90–127.
For a brief introduction to the Lanchester equations, see William W. Kaufmann, “The Arithmetic of Force Planning,” in Alliance Security: NATO and the No-First-Use Question, ed. John D. Steinbrunner and Leon V. Sigal (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1983), pp. 208–216. For a critique of the way Kaufman uses or misuses the Lanchester equations, see
John W. R. Lepingwell, “The Laws of Combat? Lanchester Reexamined,” International Security 12, no. 1 (1987): 89–134; and
Thomas F. Homer-Dixon, “A Common Misapplication of the Lanchester Square Law,” International Security 12, no. 1 (1987): 135–139. For a definitive treatment of the Lanchester equations, see
James G. Taylor, Lanchester Models of Warfare, 2 vols. (Arlington, VA: Operations Research Society of America, 1983); and
James G. Taylor, Force-on-Force Attrition Modeling (Arlington, VA: Operations Research Society of America, 1981).
Pat Hillier and Nora Slatkin, U.S. Ground Forces: Design and Cost Alternatives for NATO and Non-NATO Contingencies (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, 1980), pp. 69–70.
For the Battle of the Bulge, see Charles B. MacDonald, A Time for Trumpets: The Untold Story of the Battle of the Bulge (New York: Morrow, 1984).
For example, Dunnigan shows that F-16 Falcons exceed the capabilities of MiG-29s in air interception operations. In a similar comparison, the MiG-23s display an inferior ability to conduct air intercept missions, strike ground targets, and perform reconnaissance missions. A Defense Department study corroborates Dunnigan’s assessment. The 1990 edition of Soviet Military Power argues that the MiG-29s “lag behind their U.S. counterpart aircraft in avionics, weapons, and certain other features, but they are a much closer match than previous generations of Soviet aircraft.” See James Dunnigan, How to Make War (New York: Quill, 1988), pp. 108–109; and
Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power, 1990 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), pp. 294–296.
Paul B. Stares, Command Performance: The Neglected Dimension of European Security (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1991), pp. 25 and 27; and Mearsheimer, Conventional Deterrence, pp. 41–42.
Russell Spurr, “The Hollingsworth Line,” Far Eastern Economic Review 91, no. 9 (1976): 27.
N. Dupuy, “Mythos or Verity?” p. 208. For a critique of his methods and his response, see J. S. Brown, “Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy and the Mythos of Wehrmacht Superiority: A Reconsideration,” Military Affairs 50, no. 1 (1986): 16–20;
John S. Brown, “The Wehrmacht Mythos Revisited: A Challenge for Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy,” Military Affairs 51, no. 3 (1987): 146–147; and
Dupuy, “A Response to ‘The Wehrmacht Mythos Revisited,’” Military Affairs 51, no. 4 (1987): 196–197.
Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack: Lessons for Defense Planning (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1982), pp. 5–6.
Colonel Trevor N. Dupuy, Elusive Victory: The Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947–1974 (New York: Harper and Row, 1978), p. 596.
For accounts on the Pusan Perimeter, see Appleman, South to the Naktong, pp. 249–255; and Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. 2 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 655–662. It seems that the force-to-force ratio by then had almost reached parity or favored the U.S.-Korea forces. The force-to-space ratio of the allied forces ranged from 16 km per division to as long as 64 km per division. Given that the strength of a division in the 1950s was much smaller than a U.S. armored division of the 1970s, the force-to-space ratio must have been much below the current doctrinal norm. What is notable, however, is the fact that once the allied forces formed a continuous defensive line with a 1:1 force ratio, they were able to stop the North’s final push. In the Pusan perimeter defense, three American divisions each had 20 (32 km) to 40 (64 km) miles of front (for a total of 65 air miles) to defend, while the South Korean Army (5 divisions) held a total of about 129 km of front.
Walter G. Hermes, Truce Tent and Fighting Front (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, U.S. Army, 1966; reprint, 1992), pp. 465–470.
Stephen Peter Rosen, “Net Assessment as an Analytical Concept,” in On Not Confusing Ourselves: Essays on National Security Strategy in Honor of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, ed. Andrew W. Marshall, J. J. Martin, and Henry S. Rowen (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 283–301; and
Sun Tzu, The Art of War, trans. Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), particularly pp. 85–89. Here I adopt Rosen’s interpretation of Sun Tzu’s concept, “tsing,” as one’s “persistent characteristics.”
On “friction,” see Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. and ed. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), pp. 119–120.
For nonlinearity, see Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War,” International Security 17, no. 3 (1992/93): 59–90. For an attempt to deal with nonlinearity in combat modeling, see
J. A. Dewar, J. J. Gillogly, and M. L. Juncosa, “Non-monotonicity, Chaos and Combat Models,” Military Operations Research 2, no. 2 (1996): 37–49; and
Thomas W. Lucas, “How One Randomizes Matters: A Study of Non-monotonicity and Randomness in Combat Analysis,” Phalanx 30, no. 1 (1997), pp. 7–10.
See, for example, Russell A. Gugeler, Combat Actions in Korea (Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1987); Appleman, South to the Naktong; and
Martin Russ, The Last Parallel: A Marine’s War Journal (New York: Rinehart, 1957).
Department of Defense, Framework for the Asian Pacific Rim: Looking toward the 21st Century, Report to Congress, Washington, DC, April 1990.
Ministry of National Defense, Defense White Paper, 1992–1993 (Seoul: Korea Institute of Defense Analysis, 1993), p. 143.
Department of Defense, The United States Security Strategy for the East Asia-Pacific Region, Washington, DC, February 1995.
Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Jutta Weldes, Constructing National Interests: The United States and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).
Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 25–26.
For a similar assessment, see also David C. Kang, “International Relations Theory and the Second Korean War,” International Studies Quarterly 47, no. 3 (2003): 301–324.
The Japanese alliance has been ambiguous about the threat against which it is maintained, and its purpose might have also included containing Japan. Bruce Cumings, “Trilateralism and the New World Order,” World Policy Journals, no. 2 (1991): 195–222.
Kenneth N. Waltz, “Evaluating Theories,” American Political Science Review 91, no. 4 (1997): 915.
Stephen D. Krasner, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” in International Regimes, ed. Krasner (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), pp. 1–12.
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Suh, JJ. (2007). Power and Alliance: Assessing Military Balance in Korea. In: Power, Interest, and Identity in Military Alliances. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230605015_2
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