South Korea Defence and Security Report Q3 2009

South Korea's central bank was in a rare position in early June when it felt the need to downplay economic prospects after it issued revised first quarter economic data to show a 0.1% month on month expansion. We are also wary not to read too much into the announcement, and we stand by our earlier decision to cut our 2009 real GDP growth forecast from 3.0% to 1.5%. Exports are not likely to pick up any time son and the government's efforts to resuscitate domestic demand, have not yet filtered through into the economy.

The defence sector is one of the industry's the government hopes will allow it to avoid the worst effects of global economic conditions. It plans to spend at least 60 percent of its budgeted defence expenditure in the first half of the current fiscal year, and more than 60 per cent of the ministry's budget for next year is earmarked for domestic purchases.

North Korea's launch of six short-range missiles in early June, following its nuclear bomb test on 25 February, brought global media to consider the threat of nuclear conflict a reality for the first time in many a year, but one can argue that the tests are nothing new and made little difference to the fundamentals of relations between Seoul and Pyongyang. On the industrial front, for example, it was announced that North and South Korea would hold working-level talks on their manufacturing plants at the Gaeseong complex.

Although the US condemned the missile and nuclear weapon tests, and China's relationship with Pyongyang became colder as a result of those tests, in all likelihood it is business as usual with regard to the security situation in the Koreas.

This quarter, we have introduced a significant new aspect to BMI's Defence reports, which is the City Terrorism Rating (CTR). This assesses the risk of a terrorist attack. The CTR takes into account the overall BMI Terrorism Rating for the country in question. It also incorporates the 'prevalence' of terrorism, which recognises the frequency of attacks, and whether the city is a target for terrorists. The CTR also recognises the 'threat' of terrorism in terms of the likely numbers of victims and the ability of groups to launch sustained campaigns.

In South Korea we assess the CTR for Seoul. These City-Specific Ratings are created via an integration of the state-wide threat, with an evaluation of the city-specific characteristics and level of activity.