South Korea Upgrading its Defense Capabilities

South Korea Upgrading its Defense Capabilities

defense capabilities

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South Korea has been upgrading its defense capabilities in several fields. Seoul is reserving $218 million from its revised mid-term defense plan on cybersecurity over five years to fight growing threats from North Korean hackers.

Part of the sum will also be spent on the one-trillion-won (880 million dollars) “425 Project” to acquire five military satellites from a foreign country by 2022, in order to improve striking capabilities, enabling the destruction of key military facilities across the border, the Ministry of National Defense announced recently.

Seoul also recently announced a $210 billion mid-term national defense blueprint that has a “three-axis system” which will cover the Korean Air and Missile Defense as well.

“We’re planning to improve surveillance and striking capability on the whole region of North Korea, expand the defense ability for core facilities and develop the capability for independent, massive retaliation,” Yonhap news agency cited a statement by the ministry.

According to defenseworld.net, the South’s military plans to set up the three-tier system by the early 2020s, earlier than the initially planned mid-2020s, according to the strategy reported to the National Assembly.

The military will also push for the early operation of new striking means to destroy the North’s key military facilities. It’s developing a missile with the range of 800km in addition to the line of shorter-range ballistic missiles and the 1,000-km-range Hyunmoo-3 cruise missile.