For nearly six decades, South Korea’s (ROK) approach to security has focused on sustaining the status quo: Maintaining deterrence and a robust defence posture in order to prevent another major conflict on the Korean Peninsula.

Three mutually reinforcing strategic pillars – defensive deterrence, alliance with the US and forward active defence – have long defined South Korea’s conception of national security, its force structure and the operational conduct of its armed forces.

But since the late 1990s, South Korea’s security dilemmas have become progressively more “hybrid” and multi-faceted. Traditional conventional threats, scenarios and contingencies linked to high-intensity conventional wars vis-a-vis North Korea, have been converging with a range of asymmetric and non-linear security challenges, including nuclear threats, ballistic missiles and increasingly, information and cyber warfare.

… Michael Raska is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.