[Column by Koo Bon-young] With Military Discipline Like This, Neither Peace nor Unification Will Amount to Anything

The United States no longer enjoys the same hegemonic position it once did, but the U.S. military remains the strongest in the world. Backed by a defense budget of more than $1 trillion, it has cutting-edge weapons and formidable logistics capabilities. Its combat experience, accumulated in conflicts around the globe, is also beyond easy comparison. Yet according to a recent report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), a U.S. armored unit was soundly defeated in a mock exercise against a Ukrainian drone unit. Ukrainian forces, which have fought a drone war against Russia for five years, reportedly neutralized the U.S. troops with ease, using helicopters and drones in the air and electronic jamming support on the ground.
This shocking training result is a warning not only to the United States but also to us. It underscores the need to establish discipline within the military and maintain combat readiness through constant training. In that sense, North Korea is the more aggressive side. It is devoting itself to drone warfare while also pursuing nuclear armament to offset its inferiority in conventional forces. It is even testing new missiles and drones with Russian technical support, paid for with the blood of soldiers it sent to the war in Ukraine. By contrast, our preparations for future warfare feel like little more than words. That is especially true if troops are being assigned guard duty with batons instead of rifles.
A military that has lost discipline is often called a "Tang dynasty army." But the notion that the late Tang army was a rabble does not actually hold in China. Look at the direction of Xi Jinping’s "Chinese Dream." It seeks to revive the era of the Han and Tang dynasties, when ethnic Han-led China was at its strongest. That is why another theory has circulated: that Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist forces during the Chinese Civil War were distorted into the phrase "Tang army," or "Tang dynasty army." The reasoning is that, despite superior manpower and equipment compared with Mao Zedong’s Red Army, they were corrupt, lacked discipline, and were eventually driven to Taiwan.
The truth behind the many possible origins of the phrase is not the main issue. What matters is this: if our military is truly turning into a "Tang dynasty army" in today’s precarious security environment on the Korean Peninsula, that is a serious matter. In fact, the warning signs are already visible. Recently, there was the absurd case of frontline troops standing guard without live ammunition. There have also been a string of incidents showing slack discipline, including a near-fatal case of mistaken interception involving a U.S. reconnaissance aircraft and the unauthorized removal of firearms by a Marine officer.
Last June, the War Memorial of Korea under the Ministry of National Defense caused controversy by producing a promotional image for a Patriotic Memorial Month education program that was completely off the mark. It introduced China’s claim that the Korean War was a "War to Resist U.S. Aggression and Aid Korea." The fact that the Korean War began with North Korea’s invasion of the South has been internationally recognized through diplomatic documents from the former Soviet Union. Highlighting China’s propaganda that it "helped Korea (North Korea) resist U.S. aggression" was an outrageous act that only undermined the morale of our military.
The controversy seemed to subside after the War Memorial of Korea deleted the post, but Minister of National Defense Ahn Gyu-back revived the embers. At a meeting at the Republic of Korea Air Force Academy, he cited the phrase Cheobyeonbulgyeong, meaning not to be startled by changing circumstances. The problem was not the expression itself, but his remark that it was Mao Zedong’s motto, followed by the claim, "Mao’s motto is my motto." Mao was the man who sent Chinese troops into the Korean War and was responsible for the deaths of countless civilians and soldiers, so this was not something to tell cadets.
There is already considerable public skepticism about defense policy being driven by a president who never served and a defense minister with only reserve-duty experience. To be fair, the United States has also had several presidents, including Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, who did not serve in the military. The real problem under the current administration is that it is blurring the public’s sense of security. That is how Chung Dong-young’s suggestion that the term "main enemy" for North Korea should be replaced with "threat" comes across. Whatever his intent, it gives the impression that the government is willing to accept security leaks in its eagerness to pursue dialogue with North Korea. If such wordplay, which Kim Jong Un’s regime itself would not welcome, only loosens the discipline of our service members, that would be a truly poor course of action.
President Lee Jae-myung proposed multilateral dialogue in his National Liberation Day of Korea speech to transform the armistice system on the Korean Peninsula into a peace regime. But the Kim Jong Un regime showed little reaction. Since it enshrined the "two-state theory" in its Constitution of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in March, it appears determined to keep its distance from South Korea. In that same vein, North Korea is accelerating its fortification of the DMZ.
This reflects North Korea’s defensive posture, under which it believes inter-Korean exchanges will only deepen doubts among its people about the hereditary regime. At the same time, North Korea has kept the provision on "territorial completion" in its revised constitution. That means it has not abandoned the fantasy of achieving unification centered on the North through force, including nuclear weapons, in a crisis. This is why we must keep knocking on the door of dialogue to establish a peace regime, while also strengthening our security foundation. The government must recognize that neither peace on the Korean Peninsula nor inter-Korean unification can be achieved with a "Tang dynasty army."
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