Deputy Defense Minister Lee Du-hee hands over the unit flag to Deputy Commander Col. Choi Jin-young at the founding ceremony of the Defense Security Support Corps on Friday. [Ministry of National Defense]
Deputy Defense Minister Lee Du-hee hands over the unit flag to Deputy Commander Col. Choi Jin-young at the founding ceremony of the Defense Security Support Corps on Friday. [Ministry of National Defense]

Amid a nearly fourfold rise in military security violations over the past five years, the newly established Defense Security Support Corps — the unit tasked with addressing them — has launched without a commander, raising concerns about a gap in national security.

Of the three organizations created after the dissolution of the Defense Counterintelligence Command — including the Defense Counterintelligence Headquarters and the Defense Investigation Headquarters — the Defense Security Support Corps is the only one that began operations without a commanding officer.

The Defense Ministry held a founding ceremony for the Defense Security Support Corps on Monday, presided over by Deputy Defense Minister Lee Du-hee. At the event, however, it was Deputy Commander Col. Choi Jin-young — not a commander — who received the unit flag.

The Defense Counterintelligence Headquarters, established the same day, began with Army Maj. Gen. Pyeon Mu-sam serving as acting head and is expected to formally appoint its first permanent chief through official personnel procedures shortly. The Defense Investigation Headquarters also had Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Park Jeong-hun lead the founding of its security investigation and cyber forensics units as its chief.

Among the three organizations created from the dissolution of the Defense Counterintelligence Command, the Defense Security Support Corps is the only one that opened its doors with no commander at all.

The corps was carved out of the counterintelligence command's security functions and established as an independent, specialized organization. It handles central security audits of corps-level and higher military units, as well as investigations into security incidents.

When the Defense Ministry announced its reorganization plan in March, it said the corps commander position could be filled by a brigadier general or a civilian military official. The legal framework for the post exists, but no appointment had been made by the time the unit was founded.

The corps was officially established on Friday, and Monday's ceremony was a belated founding event held three days later.

The enabling decree — the Enforcement Decree on the Establishment of the Armed Forces Security Support Corps — passed the Cabinet on July 21 and was promulgated July 28, leaving only three days before the unit launched. That compressed timeline is cited as a likely reason why the vetting and appointment process required for a brigadier general-level commander could not be completed in time.

Alongside the leadership vacuum, questions are also being raised about the expertise of the corps' personnel. The roughly 200 staff transferred to the new unit were not newly hired; most are former Defense Counterintelligence Command security personnel who were simply reassigned.

Because the Defense Security Support Corps was established as a "general unit" — unlike the counterintelligence command — its security specialists are subject to the standard rotation policy and are expected to return to field assignments after two to three years.

Under the counterintelligence command, specialist personnel could be kept in security roles for extended periods. The shift to a general-unit structure means trained security experts may cycle out every few years, creating a risk of recurring expertise gaps. That concern compounds the leadership vacancy with a potential break in institutional knowledge at the working level.

Warning signs over military security management have already sounded repeatedly. According to the results of a special audit on public discipline in the defense sector released by the Board of Audit and Inspection in January, the number of military personnel found in violation of security rules rose from 492 in 2020 to 1,744 in 2024 — an increase of about 254 percent. Of the 3,922 cumulative violators over the five-year period, 64 percent were company- or field-grade officers, and the most common violation was negligent handling and management of classified military information.

Personal data security incidents have also continued to mount. An unauthorized user recently accessed the mobile medical imaging system — known as PACS — at the Armed Forces Medical Command, and about 8 gigabytes of data from a pool of records belonging to approximately 1.15 million people may have been leaked.

The Defense Ministry said it would "continue to pursue comprehensive stabilization measures to ensure the normal performance of duties and prevent security gaps" at the Defense Counterintelligence Headquarters, Defense Investigation Headquarters and Defense Security Support Corps, which have taken over the functions of the former counterintelligence command.


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