[Koo Bon-young Column] They Want to Merge the Military Academies Without a Navy or an Air Force

The government is pressing ahead with a merger of the three military service academies for the Army, Navy and Air Force. On the 16th, the Ministry of National Defense announced a plan to establish a four-year 'Korean Armed Forces Academy' in Jaun-dae, Daejeon. The problem is that, far from welcoming the move, concerns and complaints remain widespread inside and outside the military. Even setting aside criticism from the opposition, the alumni associations of the Army, Navy and Air Force academies, which are directly affected, are unanimously opposed. In a joint statement, they declared that they would "mobilize every means and method to rise up together with the public."
The integrated academy is one of President Lee Jae-myung's campaign pledges. Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back is leading the effort. Yet it is hard to find a senior military figure who has publicly voiced support by name. That suggests there is considerable quiet opposition within the ranks. Given the military's strict chain of command, that is a plausible inference.
Why, then, is the current administration pushing ahead so forcefully, even at the risk of fueling suspicions that it is trying to weaken the Army? The main justification is to strengthen joint operations. The argument is that joint education is essential in response to future warfare, where the boundaries between the Army, Navy and Air Force are disappearing. In fact, Australia and Canada, each with standing forces of around 60,000 to 70,000 personnel, operate integrated academies for that reason.
A closer fact-check, however, tells a different story. In most countries with large militaries, including the United States and China, the academies are separate by service. Even North Korea educates cadets separately at Kang Kon Military Academy, Kim Jong Suk Naval University and Kim Chaek Air Force University, while also maintaining Kim Il Sung Military University for officer retraining. Why do military powers not teach cadets all together? Because they do not expect that to improve jointness, and they believe the side effects would be greater. The U.S. military, the world's strongest, builds jointness through advanced officer education and training after commissioning.
If the Korea Military Academy in Taereung National Training Center, the Naval Academy in Jinhae District and the Air Force Academy in Cheongju were merged into the Korean Armed Forces Academy at Jaun-dae, what would happen? The result would be a 'navy without the sea' and an 'air force without a runway,' undermining the specialization needed for education and training. It would be like a conductor trying to produce harmony, or jointness, from orchestra members who have never learned the specialized techniques of the violin, flute or trumpet.
Another justification for the plan is to respond to an era of population decline. Minister Ahn said that "entrance scores for the military academies keep falling," citing talent recruitment as a reason for integration. But that is the wrong remedy from the outset. The real reason for the academies' declining popularity is the poor treatment officers face after commissioning. If Ahn's argument is to make any sense, the ministry should have accepted the '2+2 network integration plan' proposed by the Military Academy Reform Committee under the defense ministry's civilian-military joint special advisory panel. That plan would have combined the first- and second-year curriculum at the Korea Military Academy in Seoul, which better matches the trend of applicants concentrating in the capital region.
The Ministry of National Defense then reached for another shiny argument: economies of scale. It claimed that an integrated academy could prevent duplicate and dispersed investment and maximize productivity by attracting top faculty. But that sounds hollow. Service academies account for only about 10 percent of the officers commissioned each year, while 90 percent come from ROTC, academy graduates and the Army's third officer training program. Moreover, as the backlash in Cheongju and Jinhae shows, the plan runs counter to balanced regional development.
Public opinion is therefore also negative toward the merger. Take, for example, the National Barometer Survey released on the 16th by Embrain Public, Kstat Research, Korea Research International and Hankook Research. On the plan to create a Korean Armed Forces Academy, 55 percent said they opposed it because it would weaken the expertise and distinct characteristics of each service. By contrast, only 34 percent supported it, saying that it would strengthen joint Army, Navy and Air Force operations. Even the Reform Party released its own poll showing that opposition reached 75.4 percent.
So the government should not force through an academy merger within its five-year term without finding a convincing argument that can persuade both the military and the public. The collapse of the Yoon Suk Yeol administration's policy to expand medical school admissions is a cautionary tale. It pushed ahead with a 2,000-seat increase without enough deliberation, ran into fierce resistance from the medical community and only helped deliver a crushing defeat for the ruling party in the general election. Even so, public opinion at the time initially supported the broader idea of expanding medical school admissions. In that sense, the current military academy merger may be an even riskier experiment.
Training cadets who will become future commanders is a long-term national security project. It would be problematic if a government that does not fully understand the military gave the impression that it was stubbornly insisting on an integrated academy in a 'the answer is already decided, so just follow along' manner. The right approach, in my view, is to hold a public hearing to reexamine the plan from scratch, along with closed-door discussions within the government that include senior officers from all three services.
[email protected] Reporter