Lee turns to a general for defense minister a year after nonofficer experiment

President Lee Jae Myung on Sunday named Kang Shin-chul, a retired four-star general now serving as ambassador to Saudi Arabia, as his nominee for defense minister. The choice puts a career soldier back at the top of the ministry a year after Lee appointed the country's first defense chief without senior officer pedigree in 64 years.

Kang is widely trusted inside and outside the military, and his nomination reads as a bid for a steady hand with two contentious issues coming to a head: the transfer of wartime operational control, or Opcon, to a Korean-led command and a contested plan to merge the military service academies.

The Blue House cited the strengthening of "self-reliant defense capabilities" and "defense innovation, including academy integration" as the driving factors behind the nomination on Sunday.

Kang served as deputy commander of the Korea-U.S. Combined Forces Command from October 2023 to September 2025 and is regarded as having a close grasp of the allied defense posture. He has argued in the past that the Opcon transfer is achievable once the two countries' commanders in chief decide to do it.

The government is keen to take back wartime control as early as 2027 or 2028, though no date has been fixed. The Ministry of National Defense told Lee this month that it would finish a road map for the transition this year and seek an alliance decision on the timing at the next Security Consultative Meeting.

The transfer would require a future combined command able to operate under Korean leadership. Putting a former deputy commander at the top of the ministry may reflect the judgment that the alliance is approaching a command transition that has to be managed with as little friction as possible.

The academy plan also faces internal resistance. Opposition to the merger has hardened. Alumni associations from all three academies have called the plan a step backward for defense, arguing that it would erode each service's expertise and identity, and naval and air force veterans warn that a single academy would produce a larger officer clique than the one the Korea Military Academy already anchors.

Kang, a Korea Military Academy graduate who retired as a four-star general, may command more respect within the military than his predecessor, a civilian minister who served as a defense conscript. Kang has not said publicly what he thinks of the merger, but military officials expect him to fall in behind the government's reform agenda.

Born in Seoul in 1968, Kang graduated from the Korea Military Academy in 1990 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant. He built his career in combined and joint operations and defense policy. He served as secretary for defense reform at the National Security Office under former President Moon Jae-in. Under former President Yoon Suk Yeol, he was the director of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff before being elevated to deputy commander of the Combined Forces Command.

Kang comes from a family of independence activists and is well regarded across the political divide. Colleagues know him as a reader who rises early to work through Eastern and Western classics and who can recite passages of Carl von Clausewitz's "On War" (1832) from memory.

Kang was mentioned as a candidate to become Lee's first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but he retired in September 2025. The administration's first round of four-star appointments replaced all seven serving generals of that rank in an overhaul of the military leadership after the Dec. 3, 2024, martial law declaration. He was sent to Riyadh in February as the government worked to deepen defense industry cooperation in the Middle East.

The nomination also marks a retreat from the Lee administration's attempt to put a noncareerist in charge of the Defense Ministry.

Lee appointed Ahn Gyu-back, a five-term lawmaker, in July 2025, citing internal reform of the military and stronger civilian control after the martial law crisis. Ahn became the first minister without stars on his collar to hold the job in 64 years, and lasted a little over a year. If Kang's nomination is confirmed, the office returns to the retired Korea Military Academy generals who have filled it more often than anyone else.

Ahn has since faced renewed allegations that he deserted during his service as a defense conscript, a shortened military duty in which the enlistee is based near their home. He has denied the allegations. Figures inside the governing bloc have said his personal difficulties were weakening the drive behind the academy merger and other major policies.

Public opinion on the merger has turned sharply. In a Gallup Korea survey of 1,001 adults conducted from Tuesday through Thursday, 58 percent said the army, navy and air force academies should not be combined, against 30 percent who said they should.

A Korea Institute for Defense Analyses survey of 1,000 people in January and February found 49.1 percent in favor and 21 percent opposed, a swing of roughly six months. The two surveys came from different organizations and are not directly comparable, but the latest numbers show the political difficulty Kang would inherit if confirmed.

BY LEE YU-JUNG [[email protected]]