South Korea has launched its new Strategic Command to integrate its arsenal of conventional weapons with the United States’ extended deterrence to pursue peace through strength and to protect against aggression from North Korea.
South Korea first revealed its Strategic Command plans in July 2022 and the command officially began in early October 2024.
“Through unwavering efforts based on the ever-stronger South Korea-U.S. alliance, we have finally succeeded in establishing our Strategic Command, which integrates our military’s advanced conventional capabilities with the extended deterrence of the U.S,” South Korea President Yoon Suk Yeol said at the October 1 observation of Armed Forces Day in Seoul.
“The Strategic Command will become a key unit that steadfastly protects the nation and its people from North Korea’s nuclear and weapons of mass destruction threats,” Yoon said.
The Republic of Korea (ROK) Strategic Command begins operations amid North Korea’s continued push to further develop its missile and nuclear weapons programs, ignoring United Nations prohibitions and international sanctions against it. North Korea fired multiple short-range ballistic missiles and disclosed a secret uranium enrichment facility in the weeks before the Strategic Command launched.
The ROK Strategic Command’s role is to counter North Korea’s threats by overseeing operations of major weapons systems including high-powered Hyunmoo ballistic missiles, F-35 stealth fighters and 3,000-ton class submarines capable of firing ballistic missiles. The command will serve as a counterpart to the U.S. Strategic Command that oversees the U.S. nuclear arsenal, intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
“The establishment of the Strategic Command is our military’s strong resolve to actively realize peace through strength with a powerful defense force,” Defense Minister Kim Yong-hyun said, according to the Yonhap News Agency in South Korea.
ROK Strategic Command and U.S. Strategic Command will discuss coordination for combined operations that involve U.S. strategic assets and conventional South Korean weapons systems. South Korea will lead associated training and exercises, its Defense Ministry said in July after the South Korean Cabinet approved the presidential decree establishing the command.
The ROK Defense Ministry previously said the initial phase involves organizing key units for conventional and nuclear integration and “massive punishment and retaliation” strategies, according to the Korea Herald newspaper. Later, the command’s focus will cover newer military domains such as space, cyber and electromagnetic spectrum operations.
South Korea and the U.S. have sought to integrate their military capabilities under the bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group, established in 2023 to strengthen the ROK-U.S. alliance and enhance deterrence “to contribute to peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the region,” according to the U.S. Department of Defense.
A week before the new command launched, the U.S. and South Korea issued a joint statement, after a two-day integrated defense dialogue in Seoul, in which the U.S. reaffirmed its enduring and ironclad commitment to the defense of South Korea, using the full range of U.S. defenses including nuclear, conventional, missile defense, and advanced nonnuclear capabilities. Any nuclear attack by North Korea against the U.S. or its Allies and Partners is unacceptable, the statement said, and will result in the end of the Kim Jong Un regime in North Korea.
