South Korea puts merger critics on a new academy advisory panel as cadets question the plan

South Korea's defence ministry launched a 15-member civilian advisory committee on 10 November to guide its plan for a unified Korea Armed Forces Academy, and six of the members are graduates of the army, navy and air force academies who have opposed merging the three schools. Their inclusion follows the minister's call for a red team of critics inside the process.

The committee is split into five fields: organisation and operations, curriculum, advanced infrastructure, legal review and youth advice. Experts in each field will advise on the main policies and operating direction for the new academy. The ministry said it will run the full committee and its field panels on a standing basis and feed their advice into the founding of the academy.

The opponents joined after Defence Minister Kang Shin-chul met the heads of the three academies' alumni associations on 9 November. The alumni criticised the government for pushing the merger on its own and asked for a joint body to test the plan. Kang told them that an advisory group made up only of supporters would not be appropriate and asked each association to recommend members.

At the first meeting, held at the defence convention centre in Seoul's Yongsan district, Kang asked members to set aside political fights and think about what education officers on long-term service need to win future wars. He also urged both camps to listen to each other. Lee Chan, a Seoul National University professor on the curriculum panel, said the project should be about training officers for a battlefield shaped by artificial intelligence and advanced technology, not simply merging schools. Kang Byung-chul, head of the Seongmu security research institute, said the government still has to prove that a merger is actually the way to achieve its goals of stronger jointness, readiness for future war and more competitive education.

Earlier the same day the minister met about 60 cadets from the three academies at the Korea Military Academy in northern Seoul and told them the committee had been built half in favour and half against. Several cadets questioned whether integrated education is needed at all. A fourth-year army cadet said existing joint training already gives cadets an understanding of the other services, and a first-year air force cadet said cadets should build expertise in their own service first, proposing more shared courses and joint training instead.

Kang replied that there can be no jointness without service expertise. He said a future academy would likely work as a network linked to the existing schools, with cadets spending much more of their time in service-specific training and the joint part focused on academic subjects such as the humanities and basic science. He said formats such as two years plus two years, or one plus two plus one, have not been decided, and he promised to survey all cadets and publish the results.

The government's basic plan, unveiled in July, called for cadets from all three services to spend four years at a single academy at Jaundae, a military education complex in Daejeon about 140 kilometres south of Seoul. Kang, himself a Korea Military Academy graduate, has signalled since taking office in September that the plan could change. The ministry is reported to be weighing keeping some naval and air force academy facilities while relocating the army academy, and Kang told cadets that the location of the new school is still under consideration.