Who will win the war now… Comparing the military power of the two Koreas

In the ‘2020 Defense White Paper’ published by the Ministry of National Defense on the 2nd, the current military power of the two Koreas is disclosed and attracted attention.

In conclusion, in terms of standing troops, North Korea is 2.3 times more than the ROK military, and some of the forces, such as artillery and radiation artillery, are also quantitatively superior. However, in the field of advanced weapons, the Ministry of Defense estimates that the Korean military is overpowering the North Korean military.

The ‘2020 Defense White Paper’ describes the current state of North and South military forces analyzed by the Ministry of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff as of the end of last year.

According to this defense white paper, the standing military force of North Korea was 1.2 million, 2.3 times higher than South Korea’s 555,000. The Ministry of Defense explained that the military restructuring according to the Defense Reform 2.0 reduced the number of 44,000 people, further widening the gap in standing troops. North Korea also has 4,300 tanks, more than twice the number of 2130 tanks in the South. North Korea has the upper hand with 8,800 guns in North Korea and 6000 in the south.

The number of multiple rockets and missiles is far ahead of South Korea, which has only 270, with a whopping 5500.

In the case of the Navy, most of North Korean ships are coastal combat ships, and the Korean military evaluated that the hull age has largely exceeded the life cycle.

In terms of combat missions, South Korea had 410 units and North Korea’s 810 units. There was a big difference in terms of the number of air movers, with about 350 North Koreans and 50 South Koreans.

However, in terms of quality, the Ministry of Defense emphasized that our military is ahead.

In fact, the South Korean Air Force has more than one generation ahead of North Korea, including the F-35A stealth fighter, F-15K, and KF-16. Based on the E-737 air controller and air tanker (KC-330), which are called’Peace Eye’, it has a qualitative advantage in surveillance and reconnaissance, long-range precision strikes, and operational range.

In addition, major power enhancement plans centered on core military capabilities such as military reconnaissance satellites, medium-high-level reconnaissance unmanned aerial vehicles, high-level and ultra-precise surface-to-ground missiles, Aegis destroyers (KDX-III), F-35A, and Korean fighter aircraft (KF-X). As it is contained, this advantage is expected to continue for the time being.

In particular, the ROK Army’s K-2 tanks are evaluated as having far superior performance than the North Korean military’s flagship Sungun and Storm tanks.

Meanwhile, the white paper said that North Korea is focusing on improving the performance of conventional weapons as well as enhancing asymmetrical power such as nuclear, WMD, missiles, long-range artillery, submarines, and special warfare units. At the same time, it is believed that the ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons has reached a considerable level by conducting a total of six nuclear tests from October 2006 to September 2017.

In response, the white paper stated that the ROK and the United States have established a’customized deterrence force’ to effectively respond to the North Korean nuclear and missile threats.

It is a strategic concept optimized for the situation on the Korean peninsula such as including military and non-military countermeasures that can be implemented in every situation, from the threat of nuclear use to the stage of actual use beyond’expansion restraint’.

To this end, Korea and the United States established the ‘4D Operational Concept’, which means improving overall capabilities in the fields of Detect, Disrupt, Destroy, and Defend, and the white paper changed the term to ‘4D strategy’. I explained that there was.

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