Korean Reserve Forces: Their Mission Reconsidered

Abstract

This paper examines Korean reserve forces with respect to their missions, roles and utilisation. Korea has a huge standing army of 686,000 and reserve forces of 3,040,000. The Korean peninsular is the last spot of the cold war. In spite of mutual efforts by South and North Korea to keep peace in this region these days, there has been no sign yet to downsize military manpower and equipments by either side. It is generally believed that in the future, as the international security environment and inter-Korea relations change, the size of the standing army will be downsized and the role of reserve forces will increase instead. The Korea Institute of Defence Analyses (KIDA) estimated that the appropriate military strength of Korea be around 500,000 in the year of 2015, 200,000 less than the present size. In particular, the number of draftees will be reduced, while the number of officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) will be kept at the present level (Lim, 2001). The reduction of the standing army, as has been observed in other nations, may require proper utilisation of reserves.

Citation

Hong, D.-S. (2005), "Korean Reserve Forces: Their Mission Reconsidered", Caforio, G. and Kümmel, G. (Ed.) Military Missions and their Implications Reconsidered: The Aftermath of September 11th (Contributions to Conflict Management, Peace Economics and Development, Vol. 2), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 425-430. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1572-8323(05)02024-2