The budget for Ministry of National Defense (MND), which includes general and special account and military welfare fund, kept growing in recent years. It was 18.3 trillion won in 2008, 19.2 in 2009, 20.0 in 2010. Particularly, budget for 2011 amounted to 21.3 trillion won, a rise of 6.8 percent from that of 2010.

  In its ‘Mid-term National Defense Plan,’ MND estimates the budget would grow to 37.1 trillion won 2014. However, the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MoSF) allotted only 35.6 trillion won for defense budget for the same year. Moreover, MND’s ‘Basic Defense Reform Plan,’ which was reorganized in 2009, assumes the defense budget would grow 7.6 percent annually from 2011 to 2015, while MoSF plans discretionary spending to grow at a rate below three percent annually. Taking all fiscal conditions into account, situation for MND is not much positive as they planned.

  Trend toward both decrease in national potential growth rate and expansion in budget for education and welfare will considerably limit on increase in defense budget. Therefore, it is the moment of transition to reorganize priority for investment and to downsize budget for current outlay in order to beef up efficiency of defense expenditure.

  The report mainly evaluates program plans for military management or combat maintenance in terms of justification, legitimacy and reasonability, efficiency, thereby suggesting improvement plan.