SEOUL – Pride and jealousy have driven North and South Korea to tackle propaganda screaming matches and compete over who could build a bigger flagpole on their border. Now that one-man business reinforces a much more dangerous side of their rivalry: the arms race.
Earlier this month, South Korea’s dream of building its own supersonic fighter jet came true when it unveiled the $ 7.8 billion KF-21. The country also recently unveiled plans to acquire dozens of new U.S. combat helicopters. When President Moon Jae-in visited the Defense Development Agency at the Ministry of Defense last year, he said that South Korea “developed a short-range ballistic missile with one of the largest nuclear warheads in the world.”
Unlike North Korea, the South does not have nuclear weapons. But over the past few years, the country has improved its military spending, procured U.S. jets and built increasingly powerful conventional missiles aimed at North Korean missile facilities and war bunkers.
The impoverished North used these steps to justify expanding its own arsenal, threatening to tilt its short-range missiles with nuclear warheads and make them more difficult to intercept. Experts warn that the ensuing arms race between the two countries jeopardizes the delicate balance of peace on the Korean Peninsula.
“As both sides act and respond through arms builds in the name of national defense, it will create a vicious circle that will ultimately undermine their defenses and deepen their security dilemma,” said Jang Cheol-wun, an analyst at the Korean Institute of National, said. Unification, a government-funded research group.
The two Koreas have long been locked up in an eternal arms race. But Pyongyang’s growing nuclear capabilities, coupled with fears of the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea under President Donald J. Trump, have led to tensions.
While in office, Mr. Moon increased South Korea’s annual military spending by an average of 7 percent, compared to the average of 4.1 percent of its predecessor. After diplomacy could not eliminate the North nuclear arsenal, Mr. Moon assured the Koreans that their country was not a ‘duck’, said Yoon Suk-joon, a researcher at the Korean Institute of Military Affairs.
Shortly after the visit of mr. Moon to the Defense Development Agency, South Korean media reported that the weapon he was referring to was the Hyunmoo-4, a missile that was tested last year. According to missile experts, the Hyunmoo-4 497 miles can fly, enough to target the whole of North Korea. Its two-ton cargo – extraordinarily large for a short-range missile – could destroy the North’s underground missile bases.
Whether it could destroy the deep bunkers in which Kim Jong-un, the leader of the North, would retreat in wartime depends on how deeply they were buried. According to missile experts, South Korea would probably need ground-penetrating nuclear weapons from the United States to destroy such valuable targets.
Not to be outdone, North Korea launched a new ballistic missile on March 25, saying the weapon flew 372 miles with a 2.5-ton nuclear warhead. The test had Mr. Moon urged the next day to claim that South Korea “had world-class missile capability, enough to defend ourselves while we live up to our commitment to free the Korean Peninsula from nuclear weapons.”
Washington has been trying for decades to prevent the spread of missiles on the Korean Peninsula. Under guidelines first adopted between Washington and Seoul in 1979, South Korea was banned from developing ballistic missiles with a range of more than 187 miles and a payload of more than 1,100 pounds. After North Korea attacked a South Korean island with a rocket barrier in 2010, South Korea demanded that Washington ease the restrictions so that it could build more powerful missiles.
“We hinted that we could unilaterally scrap the missile guidelines,” said Chun Yung-woo, then national security adviser. “We have told the Americans that if we do not address concerns about the North’s growing nuclear and missile threat, more and more South Koreans will ask to build nuclear bombs for ourselves.”
In 2012, Washington agreed to deploy South Korean ballistic missiles with a range of up to 497 miles, as long as it meets the 1,100-pound limit. It is also said that South Korea may exceed the payload limit several times on missiles with shorter range.
South Korea, meanwhile, has tested missiles with growing ranges and larger nuclear warheads, including the Hyunmoo-2A, Hyunmoo-2B and Hyunmoo-2C. After North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile in 2017, Mr. Trump completely lifted the payload limit and made way for the Hyunmoo-4.
Since coming to power a decade ago, Mr. Kim is trying to build ICBMs that can reach the United States. But he also threatened to tip the missile balance against South Korea.
In January, he indicated that his country had already built short-range nuclear missiles aimed at South Korea and promised to improve them by making the mainheads ‘smaller, lighter and more tactical’. South Korea’s deterrence strategy is based on the belief that the best chance against the North without its own weapons is to build a conventional missile defense and use ever more powerful “bunker busters” to defeat Mr. Kim to fear for his life.
When North Korea tested its intercontinental ballistic missile in 2017, the United States and South Korea responded by launching their own ballistic missiles to demonstrate their capabilities of ‘deep precision’. In his book “Rage”, the journalist Bob Woodward wrote that the American missile traveled the exact distance between the launch point and the place from which Mr. Kim watched his ICBM launch.
Mr. Kim stopped all missile tests in 2018, the year of the first of his two summit meetings with Mr. Trump. After their talks collapsed, North Korea resumed testing in 2019, rolling out three short-range ballistic missiles designed to counter the allies’ anti-missile capability.
North Korea’s old navy Scud and Rodong missiles used liquid fuel and precisely lacked. The country’s new generation of missiles uses solid propellants, which makes it faster to launch, easier to transport and more difficult to target. They also have greater accuracy and evasive maneuverability that could confuse the South’s missile defense systems.
The new solid-fuel ballistic missile that North Korea tested in March likely evaded the allies’ radar during the maneuver at low altitudes, which led the South Korean army to estimate its range at 280 kilometers. the 372 kilometers claimed by the North, Chang Young said. keun, a missile expert at Korea Aerospace University. Mr. Chang said the missile could also increase the range and nuclear warhead because it was powered by “the largest rocket-propelled rocket engine ever developed and tested in North Korea.”
The North’s ICBMs still use liquid fuel, which takes hours to charge before launching, making them vulnerable to U.S. preventative strikes. But in his speech in January, Kim promised to build solid-fuel ICBMs, which pose an even greater challenge to U.S. missile defense. Such prospects deepen fears among some South Koreans that Washington is less likely to intervene if it also faces a possible North Korean nuclear attack.