Publication of the 2022 New Moon Defense White Paper
In the Yoon Seok-yeol administration’s first defense white paper, to be released next month, the expression defining the North Korean regime and the North Korean military as “enemies” will be revived for the first time in six years.
According to National Defense Ministry officials on the 6th, the draft of the “2022 Defense White Paper” contained the phrase “the North Korean regime and the North Korean military are our enemies.” If this expression is finalized, it will revive the expression that defined the North Korean system as an enemy, just like the Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye administrations. In the 2018 and 2020 defense white papers issued by the Moon Jae-in administration, the phrase “We regard forces that threaten and violate sovereignty, national land, people and property as our enemies” was replaced. The Defense White Paper is published every two years and contains important defense achievements and future policy directions.
It was already planned by Yoon Seok-yeol’s Presidential Transition Committee that the term “enemies” be included in the draft defense white paper. In the “110 tasks for state affairs” announced on May 3, the Transitional Committee said, “We are reviewing a plan to specify this in the Defense White Paper so that we can clearly recognize that the North Korean regime and military North Korean are our enemies.” Since then, the military has distributed the contents of “the North Korean army and the North Korean regime are our enemies” in the textbook for military personnel. The defense white paper also contains the same expression as the textbook on military mental strength.
The concept of the primary enemy was stated in the 1995-1996 Defense White Paper at the time of the Kim Young-sam administration: “Although North Korea does not give up its existing strategy against the South, it does not stop deploying offensive units, strengthening its military mobilization position and conducting operations against the South to form a united front.Considering the facts, North Korea is considered the main enemy.” This expression was changed to “direct military threat” in the Defense White Paper in 2004, and “direct and serious threat” was used in 2008, the first year of the Lee Myung-bak administration However, since the 2010 Defense White Paper, the expression “the North Korean regime and the military North Korean are enemies”.
According to a national defense ministry official, it has not yet been confirmed whether the 2022 defense white paper will cast “North Korea as the main enemy.” President Yoon Seok-yeol also posted on social media that “the main enemy is North Korea” soon after North Korea’s ballistic missile launch in early January when he was running for president.
Meanwhile, the North Korean military intentionally violated the September 19th Inter-Korean Military Agreement by firing dozens of artillery shells into the East Sea maritime buffer zone the same day after the previous day under the guise of joint artillery firing exercise ROK-USA in Cheorwon-gun, Gangwon-do. A North Korean Army General Staff spokesman said the same day: “As of yesterday (5), the enemy has again fired more rocket launchers and howitzers in the vicinity of the front line since 9:15 today.” order to open fire,” he said.
In response, the South Korean military rebutted that “the ROK-US artillery firing exercise is an ordinary multi-launch rocket and K9 firing exercise unrelated to the inter-Korean agreement”, and announced that the drill was performed as scheduled that day as well. This artillery fire by North Korea is the first in about a month since it fired about 80 shells in the East Sea buffer zone in Geumgang county area, Gangwon province, on 3 last month.
Correspondent Kang Guk-jin
