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South Korea The South Korean Army after World War II
In November 1945, the United States Army Military Government
in Korea (1945-48) began the task of organizing Korean military
and police forces. In December a school for training military
officers was established; the South Korean National Constabulary
was organized in January 1946. The United States originally had
planned to assist South Korea in developing only those police and
military organizations necessary to maintain law and order during
the period Korea was to be under the five-year Soviet-American
trusteeship. By 1948, however, it was apparent that South Korea
would need to expand the National Constabulary into a larger and
more conventionally organized army to adequately defend itself
from a possible invasion by North Korea. For this reason, the
United States provided funds and training to expand the eight
provincial units and one capital city unit of the National
Constabulary from regiments to brigades
(see South Korea under United States Occupation, 1945-48
, ch. 1).
In November 1948, the Republic of Korea National Assembly
passed the Armed Forces Organization Act. Under the provisions of
this act, the National Constabulary was reorganized into an army
comprising seven divisions. In June 1949, when the last United
States Army units deployed in Korea as part of the post-World War
II occupation forces withdrew, leaving behind a 500-person
military advisory group, the leaders of the South Korean army
controlled an organization that had been internally weakened by
subversion and political factionalism and that lacked enough
trained personnel and modern weapons to prepare adequately for
war.
North Korea's effort to win control of the south using
guerrilla warfare forced South Korea's military leaders to
concentrate on counterinsurgency operations. In the fall of 1949,
North Korean guerrilla units attempted to gain control of remote
areas and small towns in the mountainous areas of eastern and
southern South Korea. It was estimated that as many as 5,000
guerrillas trained in North Korea were infiltrated into these
areas by the winter of 1949. Two South Korean army divisions and
one army brigade were quickly deployed to conduct sweep and
destroy missions to eliminate the guerrillas. Counterinsurgency
operations were initiated in South Cholla Province in October
1949. In some areas, South Korean villages were evacuated both to
protect civilians and to assist counterinsurgency units in
locating guerrilla bases. By April 1950, less than 500 North
Korean guerrillas remained in South Korea. Although the
counterinsurgency program succeeded in ending the threat posed by
the guerrillas, it had a deleterious effect on the army,
necessitating reorganization and retraining for conventional war
preparedness.
Data as of June 1990
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