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President Roh's plans for an ¡°early restructuring of a cooperative autonomous national defense system,¡± which was mentioned Thursday during the national security related ministerial meeting, was good to hear. There is nothing more reasonable than for a sovereign state to take full responsibility of its own national security. However, a self-reliant national defense system can't be established only with words. A self-dependent national defense system is done with power and that power is equivalent to money. More taxes, even more than ten times the amount paid by its citizens today, must be put into the defense system.
Korea Institute of Defense Analysis, which is an affiliated organization under the Ministry of Defense, viewed that in order to construct an autonomous defense system with high military technology, Korea needs to invest about W209 trillion for the next 20 years. With the W5.7 trillion put into reinforcing military power every year, it is impossible to make it happen.
In this case, there is only one resolution. It is whether to re-implement the defense taxing system which had been temporarily implemented from 1975 to 1991 to enhance its defense capabilities or whether to divert funds from other sources such as welfare investments.
The defense budget takes about 2.7 percent of Korea¡¯s GDP, which is far below the 9.5 percent of Israel, 3.7 percent of Taiwan, and 3.5 percent of the global average rate. Korea¡¯s Ministry of Defense believes that the percentage should at least be raised to 3.5~4 percent to make progress in the military power enhancing programs.
To be straightforward, we must admit to the fact that protecting the national security of Korea with such a low budget was only possible because of U.S. military aid.
The government and the administrative party must stand honest. They must honestly inform its citizens that it takes money to enhance Korea¡¯s military capabilities and that in order to raise the needed amount, Korea must either create new taxation, reduce research development and industrial investment funds, or just freeze the entire system.
The reason why other countries ally with powerful nations and cooperate with them is not because those countries are not aware of how cool an autonomous defense system is. They are just playing smarter than us.
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