[The Editors' Verdict] The Need for Non-Physical Preemptive Strike Capabilities Against North Korea

[Kim Jong-ha, Dean of the Graduate School of Business and Defense Strategy at Hannam University] Both nuclear weapons and conventional weapons can be used to initiate and deter war. If a country is properly equipped with either one, its actual and potential military capabilities are enhanced. Both can destroy the enemy and provide deterrence from different perspectives. This is why no nuclear-armed country neglects the enhancement of traditional conventional military forces.

However, because nuclear weapons exert far greater power and influence in international relations than any conventional weapons can provide, a country armed solely with conventional weapons inevitably faces limitations and is often at the mercy of a nuclear-armed adversary. Therefore, it is essential to possess deterrence means that strongly convince the opponent that any provocation will be met with inevitable retaliation. In South Korea’s case, the presence of the United States Forces Korea serves precisely as such a deterrent.

Recently, one of the opposition presidential candidates stated that in the event of an imminent North Korean nuclear attack, they would retaliate with a preemptive conventional strike for self-defense. This statement poses no legal issues under international law. In fact, surrounding countries around the Korean Peninsula adopt and operate military strategies based on preemptive strikes (offensive-defense strategies). Therefore, expressing a strong will to take military measures to strike North Korea’s nuclear facilities and leadership for self-defense can be seen as a natural response from a political leader aspiring to be the commander-in-chief.

However, our military currently lacks sufficient intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, communication, and radar jamming assets, making immediate retaliation with strike assets difficult. Detecting and promptly retaliating against North Korea’s mobile missile launchers is especially challenging. Therefore, if there is a strong will for preemptive strikes, it is necessary to concretize clear decision-making conditions with the United States during peacetime and share a joint understanding. Moreover, rather than focusing excessively on acquiring strike assets as is currently the case, priority in force enhancement should be given to acquiring intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance, communication, and radar jamming assets.

Alongside this, rather than focusing solely on physical destruction, efforts should be made to acquire a new dimension of means that emphasize non-physical destruction?namely, preemptive strike capabilities that can be covertly used across all domains of land, sea, air, and space without temporal constraints. Cyber and electronic warfare capabilities are precisely that. Future wars are likely to be preceded by soft kills such as zero-day attacks (Zero-Day Attack: attacks exploiting security vulnerabilities) before hard kills.

Cyber and electronic warfare is a new form of soft kill warfare that uses the electromagnetic spectrum to infiltrate cyberattack malware into closed enemy networks not connected to the internet. An example is Stuxnet (a cyber missile), a means of attacking critical infrastructure operated on closed networks. It infiltrates control systems of key industries such as nuclear power and steel, inputting command codes that induce malfunctions to paralyze and neutralize enemy systems.

Recently, North Korea experienced a six-hour internet communication blackout due to a DDoS attack, demonstrating that North Korea is also vulnerable to cyberattacks. Therefore, if our military acquires the capability to interfere with, disrupt, or neutralize North Korean electronic equipment through the cyber domain, or to conduct cyberattacks via the electronic domain as a form of multi-domain operations, it would be possible to covertly and preemptively neutralize North Korea’s nuclear, missile, and various other weapon systems.

Considering these points, South Korea should, for the time being, rely on the United States’ extended deterrence against the North Korean nuclear threat while simultaneously making greater efforts to develop cyber and electronic warfare capabilities that enable effective and preemptive independent strikes against North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats and future new and complex threats in the mid- to long-term.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.