Alumni associations of Army, Navy, Air Force academies demand defense minister, Assembly defense panel chair resign

Alumni associations of the Army, Navy and Air Force academies and parents of cadets have pushed back sharply against the government's plan to consolidate the three service academies, demanding the resignation of the defense minister and the chair of the National Assembly's defense committee.

Representatives of the three alumni associations and parents of cadets from the Korea Military Academy and the Air Force Academy held a joint press conference Monday afternoon at the National Assembly's communication hall and issued a joint statement.

They called for the apology and resignation of Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back, who announced the government's basic plan to close the existing three academies and establish a unified academy at Jaundae, and of Jin Seong-jun, chair of the Assembly's defense committee, who said in a broadcast that he would "split up" the Korea Military Academy.

The alumni associations criticized the rationale the Ministry of National Defense offered for consolidation as self-contradictory. "The smaller the force, the higher the proportion of elite officers must be," they said. "Joint operations capability is achieved not through consolidating academies but through post-commissioning education and personnel management."

They also raised strong concerns about the planned relocation to Jaundae. "The service academies are not ordinary universities but institutions that forge the distinct identity of each branch," the associations said. "A Korea Military Academy stripped of Hwarangdae, a Naval Academy separated from the sea, an Air Force Academy cut off from the runway — each loses its very reason for existence." Consolidating all three branches in a single space, they added, would lead to the collapse of institutional identity and a leveling-down of education.

On the budget and the way the policy has been pursued, they criticized the government for announcing a founding directive without any detailed plan, calling it "blank-check administration." "This is a domino-style redeployment involving the relocation of large-scale units, yet not even a total project cost has been provided," they said.

They also objected to proposed changes to the academic structure, saying that raising the share of civilian professors to more than half would turn the academies into ordinary universities and weaken their function of producing elite officers.

Individual alumni associations and parent groups added their voices. The Korea Military Academy alumni association president said the academy "is not the property of any particular group but a symbol of national security and an asset of the people," urging the government to "stop its arrogant and hasty push and listen to the military and the public."

The Naval Academy alumni association also called for an immediate halt, asking the government to "stop the rushed consolidation plan at once and reconsider it from scratch," and questioning for whose benefit the integration and closures were being pursued.

The Air Force Academy alumni association proposed building a "hyper-connected virtual campus" that would link the three academies, arguing that funds earmarked for constructing and relocating physical buildings should be redirected to that end instead.

Parent groups said the honor and pride of cadets were being undermined. "Shaking the officer-training system without sufficient social consensus is passing anxiety and confusion on to the next generation," they said.

Meanwhile, the government is set to hold a public hearing on the matter in August. Amid those preparations, the Korea Military Academy alumni association submitted a formal request to the Ministry of National Defense asking it to ensure the fairness and impartiality of the hearing's panel composition, citing the principle of fair public hearing operations under Article 38 of the Administrative Procedure Act.