Recent developments on Israel’s borders have sparked exciting discussions among South Korean expert groups, the first of which notes that although Israel is a US ally, South Korea, with its specific attitude towards Israel, is more tightly connected to the Middle East than to Israel. During Park Chung-hee’s reign, South Korean migrant workers worked in the Middle East for many years, and these proceeds contributed significantly to the economic miracle.
To recall, Korea and Israel established diplomatic relations on 10 April 1962, and in August 1964, Israel opened its embassy in Seoul.
However, against the backdrop of the oil crises of 1973 and 1979, Seoul began to actively support enemies of the Jewish state, and in February 1978 the Israeli government closed its embassy in Seoul, reopening it only in 1992.
Thus, South Korea is balancing between two centres of power, wanting to maintain relations with both. “Excessive support for Israel could jeopardize Seoul’s economic ties with Riyadh,” said the Korea Times.
Meanwhile, on 6 October, President Yoon Suk Yeol and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman discussed bilateral exchanges and cooperation between the two countries in various fields during the Prince’s visit in November 2022. The total value of the agreements signed by South Korean companies with the government, enterprises and institutions of Saudi Arabia during the visit is estimated at $30 billion.
However, experts predict that if the conflict continues to spread, Middle Eastern countries will begin to provide more support to Hamas and take a tougher stance towards Israel and its allies.
In this respect, according to Kim Joon-hyung, Professor of the International Studies Department, at Handong Global University, and former Chancellor of Korea National Diplomatic Academy, the rising death toll in the Gaza Strip will leave Saudi Arabia no choice but to side with Palestine, a Muslim country. Against this background, according to Kim, South Korea should be more careful in its statements showing support for Israel. Such statements could complicate South Korea’s relations with other Muslim countries. The postponement of UAE President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s visit to South Korea, scheduled for October, due to “unforeseen regional circumstances”, may be the first sign of this. This visit would have come nine months after President Yoon paid a state visit to the UAE and secured its commitment to invest $30 billion in South Korea’s nuclear, weapons and energy sectors.
So far, President Yoon has denounced Hamas’s “indiscriminate” attacks and called them terrorists without expressing direct support for Israel, despite the fact that during a meeting between President Yoon and a U.S. Senate delegation led by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Schumer called on the South Korean government to stand with Washington in supporting Israel.
“President Yoon Suk Yeol was touched and reaffirmed South Korea’s commitment to Israel’s security,” Senator Schumer wrote on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, but the official communique did not contain such information.
This makes the author think that Seoul is trying to maintain a diplomatic balance, and it is no coincidence that South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol plans to visit Saudi Arabia and Qatar from 21 to 25 October, becoming the first South Korean leader to make a state visit to both countries.
Another big problem that South Korean experts are reflecting on is that the unexpected combined attack caused more harm to Israel than expected. In such a situation, South Korean military experts began to analyze the situation in which such a surprise attack could come from the North and such conservative media as the JoongAng Ilbo published an editorial entitled “Time to Strengthen Our Security.”
“Hamas is either directly or indirectly linked to North Korea in various areas, such as the weapons trade, tactical guidance and training. There is a possibility that North Korea could use Hamas’ attack methods to suddenly invade South Korea,” said a senior South Korean military official on 17 October, who asked to remain anonymous.
Of course, from the author’s point of view, the DPRK is not prone to suicidal actions, but the theoretical possibility was worth considering with a number of reasonable conclusions being drawn.
First, the successful penetration of subversive groups into Israeli territory using unconventional means, such as paragliders and drones, raised the question of how the Mossad, with all its reputation, could have missed the attack at the strategic level, and the border surveillance equipment at the tactical level.
Having imagined themselves in a similar situation, adjusted for the completely different Pyongyang’s capabilities, South Korean military strategists (including Kang Shin-chul, the head of the JCS operation headquarters) believe that in the event of hostilities, the DPRK will launch a sudden and powerful missile and artillery strike on key command and control facilities, communications, control facilities and infrastructure, ports and airfields, power plants, dams, etc. This will be followed by the landing of special operations forces, which number up to 200 thousand soldiers. The means of delivering soldiers can be different: An-2 aircraft, paragliders, submarines, etc. Their goal is to seize strategic locations, sow mayhem and disorder, eliminate key individuals from among the military-political leadership of the country, transfer information to increase accuracy and adjust strikes. In parallel with this, military hackers will be actively involved, provoking increased panic among the population through social networks.
After all, back in December 2016, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un publicly led a paraglider demonstration aimed at the Blue House.
According to the Korea Herald , the Israeli intelligence failure is a wake-up call for South Korean security and defence policymakers. Especially since “some critics argue that South Korea’s counterintelligence capabilities were seriously weakened in 2020 when the Moon Jae-in administration dismantled the National Intelligence Service.” In fact, intelligence was certainly not eliminated, but its potential was weakened as part of Moon’s liberal agenda.
And although Kang Shin-chul expects that in the event of a North Korean artillery attack, special forces penetration and drone attacks, South Korean troops are ready to intercept missiles on the early arc of their route, destroy enemy long-range artillery and shoot down their drones, panic sells better. “If the Iron Dome can’t stop all Hamas rockets, how is South Korea supposed to stop all the rockets from North Korea?” said Bruce Bechtol Jr., a former officer of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency.
Secondly, the massive rocket attack showed that the “Iron Dome” with a claimed intercept rate of more than 90 % (which was supposed to serve as a model for South Korea’s own LAMD missile defence system planned to be built by 2026), showed less (it is claimed to be about 78 %) usefulness against a massive rocket attack (the Palestinians claim to have fired 5,000 rockets). Israel has deployed throughout the country about 10 batteries of three launchers capable of firing 20 Tamir interceptor missiles, a radar with a range of 150 km and the ability to detect and track up to 200 targets, a tracking system and a fire control centre. The interception distance ranges from 4 to 70 km, the interception altitude is 10 km. One battery costs approximately 60 billion won, and the Tamir interceptor missile costs over 60 million won.
However, Pyongyang’s capability to strike Seoul and the capital region is estimated at about 16,000 shells per hour. About 1,000 pieces of artillery are deployed in the demilitarized zone alone, including 340 long-range artillery pieces (200-170-mm self-propelled guns with a firing range of 54 km and 140-240-mm MLRS with a range of 60 km).
This also includes KN-23 missile systems (the so-called Kimskander) with a range of 800 km. Both in terms of quantitative and qualitative characteristics, these weapons are significantly more powerful than Hamas weapons, and massive damage from North Korean artillery and MLRS seems inevitable to the South Koreans, given that about half of the country’s population lives in the “greater Seoul” area.
As a result, a tactically realistic picture was drawn: early morning of a weekend/holiday, neutralization of air defence/missile defence systems with a massive swarm attack, destruction and neutralization of surveillance, communications and fire control equipment using drones, penetration into enemy territory from the sea and air.
In this regard, it is proposed to more carefully study the tactics of Hamas units during the current conflict with Israel in order to include the results of its analysis in the appropriate response, training and exercise plans. Next, South Korea should focus on strengthening reconnaissance and surveillance means in order to launch a key hit and powerful preventive strike in advance using KTSSM tactical missile systems and K-9 self-propelled guns; develop a mechanism for an integrated defence system with a focus on air defence/missile defence systems, counter-sabotage operations, combating enemy drones and “fake news”.
Moreover, Seoul intends to use this situation as a pretext to strengthen intelligence activities against the DPRK and accelerate the withdrawal from the inter-Korean military agreement signed on 19 September 2018 to reduce military tensions. Thus, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said that the ROK was under a much bigger threat than Israel, and the only way to respond to this was reconnaissance and surveillance, and therefore, as the military leader emphasized, he intended to cancel these agreements as soon as possible.
The arguments are as follows: according to the agreements, South Korea completely stopped all live-fire artillery drills and field training exercises at the regiment level and above, which weakened combat readiness. The dismantling of 11 security posts in the southern part of the demilitarized zone makes it difficult to detect any signs of aggression from the North. A no-fly zone over certain areas of the demilitarized zone also “critically limits” the ability of South Korea and the United States to monitor North Korea.
The third block of discussions concerned whether the United States would push the North Korean issue aside against the backdrop of first the conflict in Ukraine, and then in Israel. “The Middle East war complicates already volatile geopolitical dynamics that have been clouded by Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine. The U.S.-led allies have been focused on helping Ukraine fight Russia since February last year. Now they are required to consider a collective strategy to defuse the military conflict around the Gaza Strip,” the media noted guardedly. And then it was announced that the United States planned to send Israel artillery shells that had been destined for Ukraine.
“The focus on security on the Korean Peninsula could weaken as a new front has emerged,” said Nam Chang-hee, a political science professor at Inha University. “The DPRK will not pause its activities and therefore we need someone to constantly remind us of this, while the administration’s attention is divided,” said Jenny Town, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center. “The Biden administration was not interested in taking any diplomatic risks with North Korea prior to Ukraine and Israel, and it is even less interested after Ukraine and Israel,” said Frank Aum, a senior expert at the United States Institute of Peace.
On the other hand, Patrick M. Cronin, Chair for Asia-Pacific Security at the Hudson Institute, dismisses concerns that the United States will not be able to refocus on the North Korean issue due to two conflicts, noting the willingness of American diplomats to conduct diplomatic negotiations with Pyongyang.
Invited Expert Troy Stangarone also gives a positive answer to the question “Is the United States a reliable ally?” despite public opinion polls in the United States indicating that Americans are less willing to defend South Korea than before.
Despite not being a formal ally, the U.S. has a long security relationship with Israel. The history with Ukraine is more complicated, since before the special military operation, Washington and Kyiv’s security ties were much weaker than those with Israel. However, unlike South Korea, Israel and Ukraine do not have any mutual defence treaties with the United States and thus Washington has no obligation to provide them with military assistance.
On 12 October, National Security Council Coordinator John Kirby dismissed concerns that the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas could negatively impact the United States’ security commitments to South Korea. “We are a big enough, strong enough nation, and we have global responsibilities to look after our national security interests anywhere and everywhere,” he said.
The fourth block of discussions contained veiled criticism of Yoon Suk Yeol in newspapers like the Korea Times, which, on the one hand, are conservative, and on the other, oppositional to Yoon. Articles with headlines like “Choose peaceful coexistence, not a cycle of retaliation” note that “the West, led by the United States, should strive to stop this tragedy as quickly as possible, rather than taking sides. For humanitarian and economic reasons, the world cannot afford two simultaneous wars as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict approaches the two-year mark.”
And then it comes down to the fact that Trump and Co.’s unilateral support for Israel and Netanyahu’s position have similarities with Yoon Suk Yeol’s tough course towards the DPRK, which can also provoke attacks of this kind.
Opposition media directly write that Seoul must remain neutral on the current crisis issue, otherwise, all efforts toward economic cooperation with the Arab world will become worthless. As for North Korea, the North’s artillery and 200,000 special forces are enough to give them an early advantage in a hypothetical scenario. Nevertheless, the South will win any protracted conflict with the help of the US nuclear umbrella. “Whether we win or lose, another Korean War, if it happens, will destroy this peninsula in a short period.”
Americans, including Yoon’s new Defense Minister, appear to have learned the wrong lessons from the conflict between Israel and Hamas. They are calling for the neutralization, if not cancellation, of the 19 Sept. 2018, inter-Korean military agreement, saying it only impedes the South’s ability to gather intelligence. However, any unilateral abrogation of the agreement, the only remaining means of avoiding accidental clashes, would provide Pyongyang with an opportunity to violate it rather than maintain it.
Hardliners should know that the latest failure of Mossad, Israel’s world-famous spy agency, was due to its errors in interpretation, not in intelligence gathering. This, as well as the Iron Dome’s failure, can be attributed to the lack of internal unity in Israel caused by the politics of division.
A trace of factionalism is visible in such texts, but the conflict over Gaza is not only of regional significance. We will discuss it in the next and last author’s article.
Konstantin Asmolov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Leading Researcher at the Center for Korean Studies, Institute of China and Contemporary Asia, Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the internet journal “ New Eastern Outlook”.