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US President Donald Trump and South Korean President Moon Jae-in walk past an honor guard on the way to the Blue House during a welcoming ceremony on Nov. 7. (Blue House Photo Pool)
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Trump announces that SK will be ordering “billions of dollars worth” of American military equipment
With South Korean President Moon Jae-in and US President Donald Trump agreeing to “step up our collaboration to enhance Korea's self-defense capability to unprecedented levels” on Nov. 7, it is expected that the two countries will soon be developing more concrete plans for military cooperation and weapons purchases. The three areas of cooperation with the US that Moon disclosed during the joint press conference can be summarized as follows: immediately initiating deliberations to acquire and develop state-of-the-art military reconnaissance assets; completely eliminating the limit on the weight of missile warheads; and expanding and strengthening the rotational deployment of strategic assets in the US military on the Korean Peninsula and in the surrounding areas. The area receiving the most attention is deliberations to acquire and develop state-of-the-art weaponry. “State-of-the-art strategic assets include the nuclear-powered submarines that have been discussed as well as reconnaissance assets. We have been discussing these two things already and we plan to continue close deliberations with the US in the future,” said a senior official at the Blue House. Moon has demonstrated his enthusiasm for nuclear-powered submarines since he was running for president, when he said that “the time has come when we need them.” But this is the first time that the Blue House has confirmed that it has been deliberating this with the US. The deliberations between the two sides still appear to be in the initial phase. The question of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines “was also deliberated during the previous South Korea-US summit, but given a number of international regulations and US nuclear-powered submarine technology, there were several challenges that our two countries had to carefully deliberate one at a time,” the official said. The official also mentioned two possible plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines: “Several options are being considered, since we could purchase them from the US or we could develop them together.” But it’s too early to say how cooperative the US will be. The US has reportedly never exported nuclear-powered submarines, which are a strategic weapon, nor has it ever transferred that technology overseas. State-of-the-art reconnaissance assets are a key area for dealing with North Korea’s nuclear weapon and missile threat. In order to acquire reconnaissance assets, the South Korean military has been pursuing what is called the “425 project,” which aims to put five reconnaissance satellites into orbit by 2023. But a senior official at the Blue House simply said that this is “unrelated to the satellite project” and declined to get into the details. Some military observers think this might be a reference to the E-8 Joint STARS, a command and control aircraft that is tasked with ground surveillance and battlefield management. The Joint STARS, which periodically makes an appearance on the Korean Peninsula, is capable of precisely detecting the location of North Korea’s coastal batteries, long-range artillery and tank units from an elevation of 9 to 12 km. This aircraft reportedly has a wider surveillance range than the Global Hawk, a high-altitude unmanned surveillance aircraft that the South Korean air force is planning to purchase four of next year. But the US has never sold Joint STARS to a foreign country, either. Senior Secretary to the President for Public Relations Yoon Young-chan said that the two leaders adopted the 2017 revised missile guidelines on the same day, which completely eliminate the cap on the weight of missile warheads. This implements the agreement Moon and Trump reached during a telephone call in September shortly after North Korea’s sixth nuclear test to no longer limit the weight of South Korea’s ballistic missile warheads. The two countries’ missile guidelines had previously prevented ballistic missiles with a range of 800km from carrying warheads heavier than 500kg. This agreement opens the door for the development of ballistic missiles with warheads heavier than one ton, which are expected to be capable of destroying North Korea’s underground facilities. But with Moon saying that “putting pressure on North Korea is inevitable,” some are concerned that his emphasis on strengthening South Korea’s defense capabilities as a deterrent against North Korea could made him vulnerable to Trump’s plan to pressure South Korea into buying US weapons. In fact, during his opening remarks before his expanded bilateral meeting with Moon, Trump could not conceal his excitement: “We appreciate your big purchase orders for military equipment…the amount of equipment and things that you'll be ordering from the United States will be very substantially increased and therefore we'll be bringing the trade deficit way down.” And when a question was asked during the joint press conference about South Korea’s acquisition of weapons, Trump chimed in even though the question had not been addressed to him: “[South Korea will] be ordering billions of dollars' worth of equipment, and we've already approved some of those orders.” As Trump’s remarks suggest, it was not immediately clear what kind of new American weapons South Korea has been trying to purchase recently. But it was abundantly clear that Trump intends to fully exploit North Korea’s threat as leverage for exporting weapons. “They claim to be strengthening South Korea’s inherent defensive capabilities, but in the end that means purchasing American weapons. Rather than a path to peace, this sounds like a plan to maintain tensions and the crisis by putting military pressure on North Korea while paying a huge military price,” said Kim Dong-yeop, a professor at Kyungnam University. In regard to defense cost-sharing, Moon explained that South Korea and the US had agreed to share costs at a “reasonable level.” With the next round of talks for defense cost-sharing scheduled for 2019, Moon’s remark appears to be aimed at Trump’s pressure on South Korea to pay a larger share of the defense burden. When asked about this, a senior official at the Blue House said “there was no concrete discussion of defense cost-sharing.” South Korea’s share of the defense burden in 2017 is 950.7 billion won (US$853.3 million). By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer and Seong Yeon-cheol, staff reporter Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]
