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The Defense Ministry on Tuesday announced a more comprehensive version of its reform plans for the military that includes reducing the reserve period from eight years to five by 2020. Instead, volunteers will be able to undergo training periods of some 10 days a year, with compensation, to maintain fighting strength of the reserves. A 1,160-man force of Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines personnel will be kept on standby for UN peacekeeping operations.
Defense Minister Yoon Kwang-ung and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lee Sang-hee announced the plans that also call for a reduction in overall personnel and streamlining of the top-heavy military.
In other changes, three of seven frontline Army corps will be disbanded and a new mobile Army corps created in its place. The Joint Chiefs of Staff will be given the new responsibility of maintaining combat preparedness and developing wartime plans, and their departments boosted from the current 60 with 620 personnel to 80 with 800. But Defense Security Command personnel will be slashed by 22 percent and the percentage of civilians increased from 9.6 percent to 23 percent. The ministry will in the long term raise the percentage of volunteers, focusing on Army personnel with special skills, to gradually get away from conscription.
Gen. Han Min-koo, the ministry's policy director, admitted the changes would require an average annual budget increase of 11 percent until 2015, but said large cuts would become possible afterwards.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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