South Korean Military-AI Integration: Opportunities and Risks
South Korea’s military is moving quickly from debating the role of artificial intelligence (AI) to deploying it in practice, a shift that is beginning to reshape the strategic landscape of the Korean Peninsula. In this policy brief, Suon Choi analyses how this transition is driven by several converging pressures, including the planned transfer of wartime operational control (OPCON) from the United States to South Korea, demographic decline that is reducing available manpower, and the continued advancement of North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities.
Yet the growing role of AI in the military brings both opportunity and risk. On one hand, AI promises major gains in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR), target recognition, and decision support – capabilities that can strengthen deterrence and improve operational effectiveness against the DPRK’s conventional and nuclear threats. On the other hand, Choi warns that the same technologies could introduce new sources of instability. Imperfect AI systems may misinterpret data or adversary behaviour, increasing uncertainty in already tense situations. Faster AI-enabled decision cycles could also compress the time available for crisis management, leaving fewer opportunities for communication or de-escalation.
About the Author
Suon Choi is a Research Fellow at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) and Indo-Pacific Research Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada. She served as ROK Ministry of National Defense (MND) Defense Innovation Special Advisory Committee Research Fellow and MND Policy Advisor Committee Defense Innovation Subcommittee Advisor. Her research expertise includes South Korea’s defense strategy, U.S.-ROK alliance, and Pol-Mil game strategy. Currently, she is researching U.S. extended deterrence, its credibility, and ROK’s nuclear armament debate.
She holds a BA in Economics and International Relations from Seoul National University, summa cum laude, and MA in Political Science from Yale University. She is a doctoral student in International Affairs at Georgia Tech.
The opinions articulated above represent the views of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Asia-Pacific Leadership Network or any of its members.
The APLN website is a source of authoritative research and analysis and serves as a platform for debate and discussion among our senior network members, experts and practitioners, as well as the next generation of policymakers, analysts and advocates. Comments and responses can be emailed to apln@apln.network.
Image: “REAIM 2023” by Ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken, CC BY-SA 2.0, Flickr.
