South Korea's military falls well below numbers needed for defence
This decline is primarily due to the country's record-low birthrate of 0.75, leading to a critical shortage of enlistment-age men.
The defence ministry reported a 50,000-soldier shortfall from the level deemed necessary for 2025 defence readiness, including a shortage of 21,000 non-commissioned officers.
South Korea maintains compulsory military service as it remains technically at war with North Korea, which has an estimated 1.3 million active-duty soldiers.
A recent study suggested South Korea needs a minimum of 500,000 troops to effectively repel a potential North Korean assault, warning of a "structurally difficult position to succeed in defence" without "decisive action".
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Guardian
an hour ago
- The Guardian
Why Peak China may finally have arrived
Proclamations about the inevitability of China's dominance of the global economic system, or the so-called Chinese century, were made long before Donald Trump's attempts to stymie its trade with the US. Common concerns about coercive politics and human rights aside, some notions of China as an unstoppable economic, technological and military behemoth sit alongside others focused more on an increasingly sclerotic, over- centralised political economy, that depends on wasteful economic stimulus, and features poor governance and institutions. The fusion of these notions suggests that we may already have reached 'peak China'. At the time of the 2008 financial crisis, China's official, and probably exaggerated, GDP was about $14tn (£10.4tn), or about a third of that of the US. By 2021, it had risen to three-quarters of America's $23.7tn, and there was widespread talk about in which year of the 2020s China would overtake the US. By 2024, however, China's $18tn economy had fallen back to just over 62% of the almost $30tn of the US. In GDP per head terms, China is still no more than 20% of the US. A rising China uniquely lifted its share of global GDP between 2000 and 2021 from 3.5% to 18.5%, but since then it has slipped back to about 16.5%. There is no question that China's rise is at least stalling. The working age and total population are now in relentless decline. The urbanisation rate, just over 60%, is flattening out. Productivity growth has stalled. The long surge in China's share of global manufacturing exports and production has levelled off, and the external environment for China is now much harder and more hostile. A 90-day pause in the US-China tariff war is due to expire on Tuesday, and it is unclear whether it will be extended. Part of the problem is that China has reached the end of extrapolation. The past really is another country. Some of its growth engines could only ever fire once: for example, enrolling children in primary and secondary schools; improving basic healthcare; reaping the demographic dividend of falling dependency rates; and moving people from the countryside to higher-productivity, urban jobs. Some growth also flowed from a number of highly effective policy initiatives such as those captured by the era of reform and opening-up, inspired by Deng Xiaoping: joining the World Trade Organization; creating a genuine market in housing, and exploiting globalisation. None of these can happen again. China's growth model, moreover, based on unrealistically high growth targets and uniquely high investment and savings rates, is becoming swamped by stagnant productivity, debt service difficulties and misallocation of capital. At the Central Economic Work Conference in December last year, China's premier, Li Qiang, summarised his country's condition by saying candidly that the foundation for sustained economic recovery and growth was not strong, demand was weak, and there were pressures on job creation and 'fiscal difficulties' among several local governments. Although consumption has been made a top priority, actual policy measures to make it so have been underwhelming, partly because redistributing economic power to companies and citizens also entails changes in political power, which are anathema to the Communist party. The structural downturn in the property sector, which at one stage accounted for more than a quarter of the economy, is likely to shrink for the foreseeable future, dogged by lower rates of household formation and smaller cohorts of first-time buyers, linked to demographics as well as a chronic oversupply of unsold and uncompleted real estate. The government has softened its approach to private enterprises and approved a new private economy promotion law to bolster AI, technology clusters and hubs, and reduce regulatory barriers. Low business confidence, though, is not really about regulations but about political interference, and weak demand and profits. The super-globalisation from which China benefited is pretty much over, and the world's biggest export nation is now confronted by a fragmenting and fracturing trade and investment environment in which commerce within blocs is holding up better than trade between them. China's bloc includes a majority of the world's population, but very small proportions of world GDP, investment and wealth. At the same time, developed and middle-income economies, as well as emerging nations, are pushing back against what they perceive to be predatory trade policies by a mercantilist China. Peak China does not stem from doubts about China's industrial prowess and pedigree. It is, though, about two things that can be simultaneously true: China can have world-class companies and trendsetters such as Alibaba, Tencent, BYD, CATL, Huawei and DeepSeek, as well as an economy with systemic imbalances, debt capacity limits, and political and economic contradictions. Put another way, China has islands of technological excellence and leadership in a sea of macroeconomic turbulence and trouble. This characterised Peak Japan 40 years ago, and China is shaping up for the encore. George Magnus is a research associate at Oxford University's China Centre and at Soas University of London. He is the author of Red Flags: Why Xi's China is in Jeopardy
Reuters
3 hours ago
- Reuters
Trump opens door to sales of version of Nvidia's next-gen AI chips in China
Aug 11 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday suggested he might allow Nvidia (NVDA.O), opens new tab to sell a scaled-down version of its next-generation advanced GPU chip in China, despite deep-seated fears in Washington that China could harness American artificial intelligence capabilities to supercharge its military. Trump also confirmed and defended an agreement calling for U.S. AI chip giant Nvidia, led by Jensen Huang, and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O), opens new tab to give the U.S. government 15% of revenue from sales of some advanced computer chips in China, after his administration greenlit exports to China of less advanced AI chips known as the H20 last month. "Jensen also has the new chip, the Blackwell. A somewhat enhanced-in-a-negative-way Blackwell. In other words, take 30% to 50% off of it," Trump told reporters in an apparent reference to slashing the chip's capability. "I think he's coming to see me again about that, but that will be an unenhanced version of the big one," he added. Trump's administration halted sales of Nvidia's H20 chips to China in April, but the company said last month it had won clearance to resume shipments and hoped to start deliveries soon. "The H20 is obsolete," Trump said, saying China already had it. "So I said, 'Listen, I want 20% if I'm going to approve this for you, for the country'," he added. The deal is extremely rare for the U.S. and marks Trump's latest intervention in corporate decision-making, after pressuring executives to invest in American manufacturing and demanding new Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan resign over ties to Chinese companies. Analysts said the levy may hit margins at the chipmakers and set a precedent for Washington to tax critical U.S. exports, potentially extending beyond semiconductors. The U.S. Commerce Department has started issuing licenses for the sale of H20 chips to China, another U.S. official said on Friday. Both the U.S. officials declined to be named because details have not been made public. The China curbs are expected to cost Nvidia and AMD billions of dollars in revenue, and successive U.S. administrations have sought in recent years to limit Beijing's access to cutting-edge chips that could bolster China's military. Washington does not feel the sale of H20 and equivalent chips compromises national security, said the first U.S. official. The official did not know when or how the agreement with the chip companies would be implemented, but said the administration would be in compliance with the law. The U.S. Constitution prohibits Congress from laying taxes and duties on articles exported from any state. The Export Clause applies to taxes and duties, not user fees. When asked if Nvidia had agreed to pay 15% of revenues to the U.S., a company spokesperson said: "We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets." "While we haven't shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide," the spokesperson added. A spokesperson for AMD said the U.S. approved its applications to export some AI processors to China, but did not directly address the revenue-sharing agreement and said the company's business adheres to all U.S. export controls. The Commerce Department did not immediately comment. China's foreign ministry said the country has repeatedly stated its position on U.S. chip exports. The ministry has previously accused Washington of using technology and trade measures to "maliciously contain and suppress China." The Financial Times, which first reported the development, said the chip firms agreed to the arrangement as a condition for obtaining the export licenses for their semiconductors, including AMD's MI308 chips. It added that the Trump administration had yet to determine how to use the money. "The Chinese market is significant for both these companies so even if they have to give up a bit of the money, they would otherwise make it look like a logical move on paper," AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said. Still, analysts and experts questioned the logic of resuming sales if the chips could pose a national security risk. "Decisions on export licenses should be determined by national security considerations and the tradeoffs of U.S. policy goals, not a revenue-creating possibility," said Martin Chorzempa, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, an independent research institution. "What it ends up creating is an incentive to control things, to then extract a payment, rather than controlling things because we're actually concerned about the risk to national security." U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last month the planned resumption of sales of the AI chips was part of U.S. negotiations with China to get rare earths and described the H20 as Nvidia's "fourth-best chip" in an interview with CNBC. He said it was in U.S. interests for Chinese firms to use American technology, even if the most advanced chips remained barred, to keep them on a U.S. "tech stack". Some elements of Trump's trade policy are already facing legal scrutiny, with a federal appeals panel skeptical of his claim that a 1977 law, traditionally used to sanction enemies or freeze assets, also empowered him to impose tariffs. "We aren't sure we like the precedent this sets," Bernstein analysts said of the revenue-share deal. "Will it stop with Chinese AI? Will it stop with controlled products? Will other companies be required to pay to sell into the region?" "It feels like a slippery slope to us." The analysts estimated the deal would cut gross margins on the China-bound processors by 5 to 15 percentage points, shaving about a point from Nvidia and AMD's overall margins. Nvidia generated $17 billion in revenue from China in the fiscal year ending January 26, representing 13% of total sales. AMD reported $6.2 billion in China revenue for 2024, accounting for 24% of total revenue. Nvidia has warned a China sales halt for H20 chips could cut $8 billion from July quarter revenue, while AMD has projected a $1.5 billion annual hit from the curbs.
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- The Guardian
‘Once again, the west turns away': a new book recounts the fall and rise of the Taliban
Jon Lee Anderson is 'not done with Afghanistan', despite having reported on it for more than 40 years, through invasions, occupations, the rise and fall of the Taliban and two great power retreats. 'I always want to go back,' said the New Yorker staff writer. 'It gets into your skin. Afghanistan is an incredible place, an incredible society. It's always like time travel to me, and I knew people there that are larger than life. They stay with you … I may return shortly.' Now 68, Anderson reported from Afghanistan in the 1980s, as Soviet forces lost a 10-year war, and returned in the 2000s, after 9/11 prompted the US to invade. In 2002, Anderson published The Lion's Grave, a well-received book on al-Qaida's assassination of the mujahideen leader Ahmad Shah Massoud two days before the attacks on New York and Washington, and how the US ousted the Taliban. In the foreword to his new book, Anderson writes of that time: 'The mission of the US and its coalition allies appeared to have been a qualified success. The Taliban had vanished into the hills, as had al-Qaida, and a pliant new pro-western regime had been installed.' The new book contains reporting on the 20-year US occupation, its chaotic end, and the Taliban's return. So its title is telling: To Lose a War. One standout chapter comes from 2010. US control had deteriorated. Given no choice, Anderson embedded with a cavalry squadron in Maiwand, in the south. The resulting report, The Day of the Superwadi, is bookended by the deaths of young Americans in IED explosions – an unsparing portrait of military might mired in lethal futility. At the time, Anderson refused to let it be published. He was 'severely disappointed to see that what had happened in Iraq, which I had witnessed firsthand [the subject of his 2004 book, The Fall of Baghdad] had happened in Afghanistan: the suicide blast walls were up, Kabul itself was behind this strange geometry of walls, westerners were cut off from the Afghans'. Anderson 'really disliked' embedding. He felt 'incredibly alienated, displaced. It was exactly in the same area I'd reported from back in the late 80s, and yet I was even displaced from that. I left Afghanistan feeling really nonplussed and telling my editor I didn't think I had a story. And he said: 'No, come on. You can write it.' And I did, and I still had this just, dead feeling. I don't know if it's the only story in the New Yorker's history, or one of very few, where an author has asked the editors to kill it, but I did and they honored that. And I said: 'I feel I have to go back, because this story doesn't feel right.' And I did go back.' In 2011, Anderson embedded again but with Afghan soldiers, too, on the Pakistan border. The result was another powerful essay, Force and Futility. 'I was able to define better what I was seeing,' Anderson said. 'Clearly, I was always a foreigner, an outsider, but I had that experience of being with Afghans.' More than a decade later, putting together To Lose a War, Anderson finally saw the value of the piece he had killed. He 'realized it had an integrity. It helps fill in the blanks. Ultimately, if I have a critical observation, it's that the United States … I mean all of the west, but really it was always US-led … they never really engaged with Afghanistan. That was what I was feeling. I knew it to be just a terrible thing. [The US effort] was doomed because of that.' Anderson provides compelling portraits of American soldiers in extremis. Prey to the shifting realities of Afghanistan, Lt Cols Bryan Denny and Stephen Lusky are driven, idealistic and lost. 'They were honorable men,' Anderson said. 'At the point I was seeing them in the war, the chance to win had passed. They never came out and said, 'This is doomed.' They couldn't: they had young, young boys they were trying to keep alive, and they were doing the best they could. But I had this really strong sense that they knew. 'This was their job. It was an honorable thing. And what was interesting, and I guess among some soldiers you do find this, was this sense of idealism. We tend to objectify them: guns and uniforms and so on. But actually the US military includes a hell of a lot of idealists, many more than you tend to meet in your life. They try to believe in what they're doing, because they're dealing with life and death every day. So I try to acknowledge that but also get to the human story.' Maiwand, where Lt Col Denny served, was home to a physical reminder of Afghanistan's bloody history. About 10 miles (17km) from the US base stood 'a very large, oddly shaped dirt mound … ris[ing] inexplicably up from the flatland'. In 2011, it housed the Afghan national police. It was built thousands of years before, by Alexander the Great. The Americans stayed for 20. Combat operations ended in 2014, under Barack Obama, but the last troops left in 2021, Joe Biden overseeing a withdrawal initiated by Donald Trump. The result was bloody chaos: 13 Americans and at least 170 Afghans killed by a suicide bomber, the Taliban surging back to power, civilians scrambling to get out. Anderson helped Afghans escape. He also went back to report, 'with the central question that we all had, which was: 'Is this the old Taliban or the new Taliban?' We didn't really know. 'In the first missives out of there, we saw our colleagues interviewing guys dressed in the usual Kandahar shalwar kameez [traditional tunic and trousers], and also another group of Taliban dressed up in American special forces uniforms,' he continued. 'And we saw that they no longer were prohibited to deal with the graven image, because they had smartphones. So there was this kind of hope that they were different. 'And so most of my foray involved trying to get in front of Taliban officials, whoever I could, and guys in the field, and ascertain where their heads were at and whether they were, in fact, the new warm and fuzzy or the old astringent and cruel Taliban. 'I came away, especially from the leadership, with apprehension. I didn't feel that they dealt with me honestly … whether it was the guy in Bamiyan or the foreign minister designate or the information minister in Kabul. And so that remains unresolved.' Anderson seems more certain about the fate of Afghan women. 'Pretty much every woman I met who was able to talk with me on their own asked me for help to get out of the country,' Anderson said. 'Not just women. Pretty much everyone I met who was not with the Taliban asked me, whether it was a civil servant, an assistant in the ministries, stewardesses on an airplane. 'I met this group of women I talked to at length, and I followed up with some of them, and they knew what was coming. I don't say it in the book, but I remained in touch with one. She managed to get her family out. First in Mexico, now in the States. I don't know if they're deportable [by Trump] or not. 'One woman said: 'I know what's coming. I know what they're going to do.' And she was right. It's even worse than what one would have expected four years ago. Women have been formally prevented from speaking outside their homes, which are like fortresses. They can't travel without a male companion from their family. I don't even know what they're doing about maternity wards in hospitals now.' Anderson sees few signs for optimism. 'There are factions within the Taliban,' he said of the perennial struggle for power. 'It's not over. Will this come to blows? It could.' Among warring parties is an Islamic State offshoot Anderson called 'Frankenstein's Isis, Isis Khorasan, which is just a more extreme version of the Taliban. 'Afghanistan has never gone to a new stage without spilling blood,' he continued. 'There's a few countries like that. This conceit we have in the west, that you can only get to the next threshold of history through peace negotiations or some kind of civic compact … it doesn't happen in the old world. It doesn't happen in this place. The new stages are always reached through bloodshed. 'And I don't know how you break that dynamic, but this group in power now has not broken it, nor will they break it. They're seeking it with new injustices that will need to be redeemed or avenged. And that's just the way it is. 'And once again, the west turns away, because Afghanistan is a place of shame and failure. But it's still there. Just like it was for the Soviets, just like it was for us, and so on back through time.' To Lose a War is out on Penguin Press on 12 August
