According to a former top army officer, the political unrest that has swept South Korea’s military forces has caused them to experience” a crisis of leadership.” Additionally, he charged senior officials with acting hostile toward the army.
According to Chun In-bum, a retired lieutenant colonel in the Republic of Korea Army and a senior fellow with the National Institute for Deterrence Studies, the “disrespect” for the armed forces has become a subject of widespread public criticism of the defense in the wake of former president Yoon Suk Yeol’s declaration of martial law on December 3.
Yoon was impeached and removed from office by the Constitutional Court on April 4 because it declared martial law. Along with a former cabinet minister, some military officers, and police officers, Yoon is facing claims of insurrection at Seoul Central District Court on Monday.
Politicians display” no value”
Chun told DW that criticism of the military forces is unjustifiable because the majority of the country’s military personnel behaved properly and appropriately during what many people have characterized as an attempted coup. He argues that the issue lies with officials and senior military authority.
According to Chun,” the way in which human political leaders treat the army with no regard” is a problem. ” The majority of the military showed poor wisdom,” according to the generals who participated in the military law charter.
The politicians may include applauded those officers who chose to reject the military law, Chun claimed, but rather “made them all look like children.”
Chun even criticizes various issues that have entered South Korea’s military forces.
According to him, “in Asian world, there has come a consensus that there will be no accidents in the military, specifically no fatalities during training.”
The only way to lower the instruction to a level where it is inadequate in preparing soldiers for war is to reduce the training, Chun continued, adding that no officer wants his troops to suffer.
However, officers have succumbed to that pressure, he said, making training regimens unnecessarily simple.
The result is a militarily unskilled force that ignores risk and prepares its soldiers, he claimed. And if you’re a young officer and you see other officials acting similarly and getting promoted, they’ll do the same.”
Lack of training is linked to injuries
According to him, this lack of training may be to blame for a number of incidents that have occurred in the military, including the March attack of a town outside a training zone by fighter-bomber jets and an incident later that month when a military drone collided with a stable helicopter, causing both to be destroyed.
The issues that problems are entangling the country’s military forces are shared by Professor of International Relations Dan Pinkston, who works on the Seoul school of Troy University.
There are unquestionably risks and possible problems that may arise if a country’s military becomes politicized, he said. We’ve seen hiring of defence officials because of their close associations, some of which date back to high school, and because those friendships are being given precedence over ability.
A “betrayal” of young divisions
Pinkston called the senior officials ‘ choice to support Yoon during the most recent problems” a real treachery of the young soldiers.”
These were the professional men who broke into the Parliament building because they were instructed to do it, he said. It is a wonder that no one was murdered that night, but those people have been betrayed, the author says.
Chun and Pinkston maintain that the country is protected despite the difficulties the South Vietnamese military faces, not the least of which is the loss of many of its most mature and expert commanders as a result of their participation in the martial law charter.
” We are lucky that the young men and women of the military forces are doing their work on the front ranges,” Chun said. The sooner we may move on from that, the sooner we can say we have a problem higher away.
