Lee’s claim that South Korea’s military is the world’s fifth-strongest faces a reality check

President Lee Jae Myung recently hailed South Korea's military as the "fifth-strongest in the world," repeating the claim during a press conference marking one year in office on June 8 while noting that North Korea is ranked 31st.

Some experts, however, have bristled at the proclamation.

No Cabinet minister or agency head has publicly proclaimed the figure. Defense experts say the ranking measures only conventional forces and excludes nuclear weapons while offering a limited picture of the country's actual security capabilities.

The figure comes from Global Firepower, a U.S.-based defense data outlet that ranks 145 nations annually using more than 60 indicators. It placed South Korea fifth in its 2026 edition, behind the United States, Russia, China and India and ahead of France, Japan and Britain, maintaining the rank since 2024.

The index assesses conventional war capability across more than 60 indicators, including tank fleets, active troop numbers, defense budgets and logistics. It does not account for nuclear weapons, a point experts have identified as the ranking's central limitation in the context of South Korea's assessment.

Jung Kyeong-woon, an analyst at the Korea Research Institute for Strategy, said the figure was better understood as a slogan than a true measure of national defense, since it tended to serve as a number that suited whatever point someone wanted to make. Reducing defense power to a single ranking was difficult, he said, because many of the elements of modern warfare cannot be quantified.

"If you have a string of factors multiplied together and even one of them is zero, the whole thing is zero," Jung said. "Defense power works the same way. There are physical factors and there are intangible ones, and if any single one fails, it pulls down the rest."

The exclusion of nuclear weapons was the clearest example, Jung said. North Korea possesses both nuclear and conventional forces, he noted, and has given no assurance it would refrain from using the former.

"Once you enter the nuclear domain, conventional forces matter far less," he said, describing a scenario in which a single warhead reaching Seoul would render front-line troop dispositions largely irrelevant.

Jang Won-joon, an associate professor at Jeonbuk University's Department of Defense Technology and Industry, gave the ranking a bit more credence.

“The index has some value,” he said, pointing to the dozens of quantitative measures behind the rankings.

"South Korea has spent more than 70 years building conventional capability across ground, air, naval and guided-weapons domains in response to the North's threat," Prof. Jang said. "Ranking fifth or sixth in conventional power is meaningful, especially with K-defense exports doing well and the U.S. alliance reinforcing deterrence."

However, the nuclear gap does limit the ranking's significance, Prof. Jang added. "Because we have no nuclear weapons, and North Korea is now widely acknowledged to possess them, conventional forces alone cannot fully secure deterrence," he said. "The defender is always at a disadvantage, and the burden of the North's threat is real."

Both experts said the index cannot weigh several factors central to combat outcomes. Jung cited the will to fight, comparing South Korea with Israel, where national survival is felt more immediately, and the question of how effectively a country can convert its peacetime economy to a wartime footing.

Japan's overall national power is roughly three times South Korea's by measures such as population, economy and territory, he noted, yet its Self-Defense Forces field about half the personnel. Such factors, he said, are not captured in the ranking at all.

Jang pointed to emerging domains he said would define future conflict. The wars in Ukraine and in the Middle East have shown that AI, drones and unmanned systems as well as cyber, space and electronic warfare are reshaping combat, and Korea is generally assessed as weaker in those areas than in its conventional arsenal.

"Modern wars begin by jamming and blinding the other side," Jang said. "The real question is whether our weapons have the electronic warfare and network capabilities to operate in that environment."

Korea lacks a domestic equivalent to data-integration systems such as Palantir, and the speed of acquiring such a program has become a weakness in its own right, according to Jang.

"Even a perfect weapon delivered in 10 or 20 years is meaningless," the professor said. "We are not good at rapid prototyping and iterative improvement, and that has to change."

Jung also raised concerns about specific programs. He said South Korea's missile defense architecture needed significant improvement, and that the government's promotion of a nuclear-powered submarine struck him as more optimistic than the underlying conditions justified, amounting to public reassurance more than a fully realistic plan.

Both said the ranking was most useful as a diagnostic tool rather than a measure of standing.

"Comprehensive superiority in an index does not give us much in practice," Jang said. "What matters is pinpointing the vulnerable areas and concentrating investment in them."

BY KIM MIN-YOUNG [[email protected]]