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Sourth Korea Military Space

South Korea, a relative latecomer to the space technology field, is struggling to catch up to its powerful neighbors China and Japan, which are decades ahead. It launched its first satellite in 2013 after two failed attempts and sent an astronaut to the ISS on board a Soyuz rocket in 2008. There are no publicly available reports that articulated South Korean military space doctrine or official military space policy. The South Korean military has become a major implementer of mlitary space technology, particularly in response to recent North Korean missile activity. South Korea does operate a dual-use communications satellite, Koreasat 5 (Mugungwha 5), launched in 2006. The payload reported carries 12 military relay terminals and 24 commercial terminals, with military coverage from the Malacca Strait to the central Pacific Ocean areas. South Korea’s space program has been driven by additional, interconnected motivations, namely: to transform its military into a more technology-intensive, civilian-dominated, and jointly interoperable force structure; as well as to promote growth in and harness the capacity of private sector advancements in space technology.

The ROK Air Force (ROKAF) in 1998 opened the Space Weaponry Branch in the Weapon Systems Bureau of the Air Force Studies and Analyses Wing, and, in September 2007, replaced it with the Space Development Branch within Air Force Headquarters. In addition to signing a memorandum of understanding with the civilian-run Korean Aerospace Research Institute (KARI) and the Astronomical Center, in support of the construction of the Naro Space Center and the first Korean astronaut program, the ROKAF began to recruit personnel with space expertise as well as send a handful of officers each year to train at the US Air Force’s National Security Space Institute in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Clint Work and Seonhee Kim note that "The future-oriented planning in the various armed services and the MND was eventually brought together in the Defense Reform Plan 2020, released in September 2005 under then President Roh Moo-hyun. Although the subsequent Lee Myung-Bak Administration would adjust the plan’s more ambitious goals as well as its cost, the importance of the military use of space remained in play. It has been repeatedly and more systematically featured in successive ROK defense white papers in 2008, 2010, 2012, and 2014, as well as in the 2014 National Security Strategy."

The administrative vision of President Park Geun-hye is "A new era of hope." The Korean government confirmed a total of 140 administrative tasks categorized into 14 categories under the four administrative priorities at a cabinet meeting led by President Park Geun-hye on May 28, 2013. The four confirmed administrative priorities are achieving “economic revival,” “happiness for the people,” “cultural renaissance,” and laying the “foundation for peaceful unification.” New administrative tasks have been included under the cultural renaissance administrative priority "13. To realize the vision of becoming a space powerhouse by developing indigenous space technologies."