| Since the birth of the two Korean states on the Korean peninsula in 1948, the two disparate political entities engaged in a dire struggle for survival and legitimacy. The two antithetic regimes created respective armed forces, which were utilized as a tool in their quest for national survival and prevalence. The Northern forces acquired a stronger combat power thanks to the Soviets' generous military assistance, which was manifested in the North-initiated Korean War in 1950. In the ensuing decades, the Northern forces continued to pose a formidable military threat on the security of South Korea. The Southern forces had to find an appropriate military strategy to counter the Northern military threat.; Three factors affected the development of South Korea's military strategy: the military threat posed by the Northern regime; the strategic influence of the United States over South Korea; and the internal conditions of South Korean society. In different decades, these three factors exerted different impacts on South Korea's military strategy development.; In the 1950s, South Korea could not formulate a desirable military strategy due to North Korea's overwhelming military strength, the United States' massive commitment on South Korea, and the youngness of the Southern government's leadership and statecraft. In the 1960s, facing the Northern regime's egregious military provocations and taking advantage of the United States' fundamental focus on the Vietnam War, South Korea began to take an embryonic assertiveness in its military strategy. In the 1970s, affected by the Nixon Doctrine and its entailing implementations, South Korea had to opt for a self-reliant military strategy, as expressed in the Force Improvement Programs. In the 1980s, the growing strategic importance of Seoul compelled South Korea to choose an active defense-offense operational strategy. From the latter part of the 1990s, however, the murkiness of the Kim Dae Jung government's national strategy (the Sunshine Policy) toward North Korea confused and befuddled South Korea's military strategy, which, accordingly, fell into a state of disorientation. |
