Defense Ministry abruptly postpones military academy merger announcement

Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-baek abruptly canceled a planned Sunday morning briefing on the basic plan for establishing a unified Korea Military Academy just 100 minutes before it was set to begin. Analysts say the ministry may have felt pressure from a growing impeachment push against Ahn, fueled in part by the controversial plan to merge the Army, Navy and Air Force academies into a single institution.

Ahn attended a joint public-private review meeting Sunday as part of the "three mega-projects" initiative led by President Lee Jae-myung. As Ahn is also accompanying the president to a NATO summit where defense industry is a key agenda item, the announcement of the basic plan is not expected until Thursday at the earliest.

As of Sunday, a National Assembly petition calling for Ahn's impeachment had drawn nearly 290,000 signatures — the highest for any cabinet-level official since the Lee Jae-myung administration took office. A separate petition demanding a halt to the planned merger and relocation of the Korea Military Academy has also surpassed 120,000 signatures.

Retired generals have raised concerns that the plan to establish a unified Korea Military Academy is politically motivated, lacks sufficient justification and could ultimately weaken the country's military capabilities. Critics say the ministry reached its conclusion first and is now working backward to build a rationale.

Song Bang-won, an adjunct professor of defense acquisition at Konkuk University and a graduate of the Korea Military Academy's 52nd class, said the merger is fundamentally "punitive and aimed at dismantling the academy over its association with martial law and insurrection."

Song noted that many commanders implicated in the 2018 martial law document scandal and actual martial law mobilization plans were Korea Military Academy graduates. "The core of this is a measure targeting the Korea Military Academy, driven by the perception that it has repeatedly instigated martial law and caused trouble," he said. "The Naval Academy and Air Force Academy have been dragged in as sideshows and scapegoats."

Jeong Chang-uk, a professor at Kwangwoon University's Missile Strategy Center and a graduate of the Air Force Academy's 43rd class — who previously taught leadership studies at the Air Force Academy — described the concept of "jointness" as "a fine-sounding but hollow slogan." He argued that militarily advanced nations with extensive combat experience, such as the United States, maintain separate service academies because history has shown that service-specific expertise is central to winning wars.

On the Defense Ministry's argument that declining admission cutoff scores at the Korea Military Academy and other service academies justify reform, Jeong said the trend is "a structural phenomenon driven by declining social preference for a military career, and cannot simply be blamed on the current system."

He also offered an educational perspective, arguing that a four-year university curriculum "has been established over centuries of trial and error as the optimal period for developing high school graduates into capable members of society." The service academies' four-year programs have evolved within that framework to produce officers suited to each branch's needs, he said. Splitting the curriculum into a 2+2 format — two years of shared study followed by two years of branch-specific training — would undermine the inherent benefits of higher education, he added.

Concerns have also been raised about a potential skew toward the Air Force and distortions in branch selection. If applicants are admitted to a unified academy and then allowed to choose their branch, many are expected to prefer the Air Force — particularly pilot tracks. This could drain top talent away from the Army and Navy, leaving the country without a well-rounded pool of officers capable of commanding across all domains.

Even those who understand the rationale for integration from the standpoints of jointness and resource efficiency have called on the government not to rush everything through within the current administration's term. They say two to three years should be spent building policy consensus, shaping public opinion and thoroughly persuading both citizens and veterans.

A Navy veteran who graduated from the Naval Academy said that "if we assume South Korea's armed forces will eventually shrink to around 300,000 to 400,000 personnel, a unified Korea Military Academy could be an efficient model." Given that the three service academies currently admit a combined 600 to 700 students per year, he said, "integrated education to enhance jointness would be more effective than a fragmented system."

The veteran cautioned, however, that "rushing it through within the current term would only drive up social costs, and there is a strong chance momentum will collapse again after the 2028 general election." He urged the government to "design it as a century-long project and hand it off to the next administration."

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon weighed in on Sunday via Facebook, writing: "What is needed now is not a performative merger but reform that strengthens the military's competitiveness." He added that the plan "should not be pursued solely on the grounds of fulfilling a presidential campaign pledge, without sufficient review and public consensus."

Some critics have also argued that the real issue at the heart of the debate is not the merger itself but the proposed relocation of the Korea Military Academy out of Seoul. The substantive core of the current discussion, they say, is whether the academy should remain at its Taereung campus or be moved to a provincial location. Another veteran said the relocation and regionalization of the Korea Military Academy "is the real substance, entangled with political, historical and power-structure considerations, while the merger and unified academy concept is closer to packaging and framing."