September 3, 2025
SEOUL – Israel’s air defense system, represented by the much-heralded Iron Dome, intercepted the vast majority of missiles fired from Iran during an exchange of fire in June.
Despite waves of ballistic missiles and drones that partly penetrated Israel’s multilayered defenses, the assault resulted in relatively few casualties, according to Israeli officials.
The episode has sharpened debate in South Korea, which remains technically at war with North Korea, about whether its own air defense system could withstand a barrage of missiles from the North, whose nuclear weapons program has advanced rapidly in recent years.
Would the South’s air defense system be able to protect the 51 million people living here if the North fired hundreds of missiles and artillery rounds?
The short answer, analysts say, is no.
South Korea’s multi-layered air defense network, known as the Korea Air and Missile Defense, cannot fully protect the country from a large-scale missile or artillery barrage by North Korea. The system is designed to limit damage, not to guarantee safety.
Overall, an expert judged that if North Korea were to launch multiple types of weapons simultaneously, it would be difficult to block them all with this network alone.
“Even with a multi-layered defense in place, many experts, including myself, believe that the system on its own would struggle to withstand a mixed, simultaneous strike from North Korea,” said Hong Min, a senior researcher at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
Experts also note that the proximity between the two Koreas, with Seoul 40 kilometers away from the Demilitarized Zone, leaves the South with very little reaction time if the North decides to strike. Long-range artillery could strike the capital in minutes, they say.
However, the number of lives that could be spared would depend largely on how Seoul and the military choose to deploy each layer of the existing shield, which is being steadily upgraded.
“The Iron Dome was developed by Israel specifically to protect densely populated civilian areas from short-range rockets and artillery,” explained Hong. “It is the same here. The outcome will depend on which weapons are used to defend which areas.”
This raises a larger question: Who is the system ultimately designed to protect?”
Seoul, like many other governments around the world, does not publicly disclose whether the KAMD prioritizes military installations such as air bases, command centers, nuclear plants or civilian population centers.
“If North Korea knew the prioritization, it could adapt its attack strategy to exploit gaps, such as targeting unprotected assets,” a Seoul Defense Ministry official, declining to be named, told The Korea Herald.
South Korean defense experts and former officials have stated in interviews that the overall structure of KAMD is known, but the operational doctrine, target priorities and exact deployment details are kept secret.
South Korea has spent the past decades building a multi-layered missile defense system to counter the growing threat from North Korea, which has developed an arsenal of short- and medium-range missiles, long-range artillery and, more recently, hypersonic weapons.
The KAMD is not a single shield but a patchwork of overlapping systems, some American-supplied and others built at home. Together, they are designed to intercept incoming threats at different altitudes and stages of flight.
At the lower tier, South Korea fields Patriot missile batteries — upgraded PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors supplied by the United States — to defend against aircraft and short-range missiles in their final approach.
At the system’s mid-altitude tier, the country relies on an upgraded version of the Cheongung-II, also known as the M-SAM Block II. Its hit-to-kill interceptor, improved radar detection and ability to track multiple targets at once allow it to engage both aircraft and ballistic missiles at altitudes of roughly 15 to 20 kilometers.
A follow-on system, the Cheongung-III, is now in development. South Korean defense officials say it will expand its range fivefold and its defended area nearly fourfold, drawing frequent comparisons to Israel’s Iron Dome.
Above them sits the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, operated by US forces in Seongju, North Gyeongsang Province. THAAD interceptors can strike ballistic missiles as high as 150 kilometers, adding a critical upper layer of protection. South Korea is also developing its own long-range interceptor, the L-SAM, intended to overlap with THAAD and expected to become operational later this decade.
Several of the layers are being reinforced or upgraded, including the Block-II version of KM-SAM, which was recently deployed to intercept ballistic missiles, not just aircraft.
For all the billions poured into radar arrays and interceptor missiles, experts acknowledge that no shield can guarantee complete protection against the North’s arsenal, which includes thousands of artillery pieces just north of the border and a growing stockpile of nuclear-capable missiles.
That reality has left South Korea dependent on its decades-old alliance with the United States and Washington’s pledge of extended deterrence — the commitment to defend its ally with the full range of American military capabilities, including nuclear arms.
But faith in that promise has been eroding. In South Korea, doubts about America’s “ironclad” commitment have grown, fueled in part by the unpredictability of the Donald Trump administration’s foreign policy.
A report by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies last month noted that the 2023 Washington Declaration sought to reinforce deterrence through the regular deployment of US strategic assets and the creation of a bilateral Nuclear Consultative Group. Yet North Korea has pressed ahead with testing new delivery systems, continuing to cast what the institute called a “nuclear shadow” over the peninsula.
The think tank argued that Seoul could instead consider pursuing nuclear latency — developing the technical capability to produce nuclear arms on short notice while stopping short of weaponization and remaining within the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
“With North Korea’s nuclear threat now constant, and public trust in US extended deterrence weakening, securing nuclear latency is emerging as an inevitable strategic alternative,” the report concluded. “Now is the time to think the unthinkable.”
