How South Korea can deter North Korea’s nuclear gambit with precision air and naval power

The missiles from Multiple Launch Rocket Systems of 210th Field Artillery Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division/ROK Combined Division, and 5000th Battalion, 5th Field Artillery Brigade, 5th Corps, ROK Army, fly across the range into the designated target during demonstration of the combined live fire exercise Aug. 17, 2015 at Seungjin Range, near Pocheon, South Korea. (Photo by Pfc. Jaewoo Oh)

The Atlantic Council’s recent report, A Rising Nuclear Double-Threat in East Asia: Insights from Our Guardian Tiger I and II Tabletop Exercises, has reignited urgent conversations about deterrence credibility in the Indo-Pacific. The simulations explore a chilling dual contingency scenario: simultaneous crises in the Taiwan Strait and on the Korean Peninsula.

Most alarmingly, both tabletop exercises assume that North Korea employs tactical nuclear weapons against South Korean targets, while the United States, despite its long-standing promises that Seoul is under its nuclear umbrella, refrains from nuclear retaliation. This troubling gap between declaratory policy and demonstrable resolve casts a long shadow over US extended deterrence guarantees in the region.

In a geopolitical environment where South Korea remains a non-nuclear state by policy and design, the question then becomes: How can Seoul — and by extension, the US-ROK alliance — credibly respond to such a grave provocation without resorting to nuclear escalation?

The answer lies not in deterrence by punishment through nuclear reprisal, but in demonstrating the capacity for rapid, precise and survivable conventional preemptive strikes.

Specifically, this requires serious investment and doctrinal planning around real-time intelligence, surgical air operations, and advanced stand-off missile capabilities aimed at decapitating North Korea’s leadership or neutralizing its nuclear command-and-control nodes before launch orders can be executed.

Rather than waiting to retaliate after a tactical nuclear strike, South Korea must develop credible preemptive precision strike capabilities that can neutralize North Korea’s nuclear-use chain at the point of activation. This is not about launching a preventive war but about maintaining the ability to act in real time when intelligence confirms that a launch is imminent.

A doctrinal shift toward decisive, anticipatory conventional action — using survivable assets like stealth aircraft, terrain-hugging cruise missiles, and electronic warfare support — can shift the cost-benefit calculus for Pyongyang. The very existence of such a capability, if paired with clear signaling and allied coordination, can deter tactical nuclear use by threatening to deny the regime its window of opportunity before launch authorization can be executed.

Capabilities wise, this is a feasible solution.

Though North Korea has long been portrayed as a “porcupine” state bristling with layered air defense systems, the actual quality and viability of those defenses are increasingly questionable. While Hollywood dramatizations like Top Gun: Maverick portray Soviet-era systems such as the SA-3 as deadly and resilient, historical precedent suggests otherwise. In 1987, a Cessna light aircraft flown by a West German teenager famously penetrated the Soviet Union’s tri-layered air defense network and landed near Red Square. In 2020, Turkish F-16s conducted precision strikes inside Syria with impunity, revealing the vulnerability of Damascus’s aging Soviet-derived air defense systems. Even the Russian invasion of Ukraine has shown that supposedly robust integrated air defense systems (IADS) can be saturated or circumvented by concerted efforts involving electronic warfare, decoys, and low-RCS munitions.

North Korea’s core surface-to-air missile arsenal — comprising the SA-3, SA-5, and man-portable SA-7 platforms — is outdated by modern standards. While the KN-06 — its domestically developed analogue to the Russian S-300 — has been declared operational since 2017, its effectiveness against modern electronic warfare suites and low-observable platforms remains doubtful. In a high-stakes scenario, electronic suppression operations could likely render much of Pyongyang’s air defense network blind and deaf within minutes. The compact and clustered distribution of North Korean radar and SAM sites further increases their vulnerability to coordinated SEAD campaigns.

The Republic of Korea Air Force (ROKAF) has been incrementally building such capabilities. Its F-35A stealth fighters can carry up to eight Small Diameter Bombs (SDBs), each capable of precision strikes with minimal radar signature. A viable preemptive strategy would involve F-35s flying northwest via the West Sea, bypassing the radar-saturated DMZ corridor, and then veering east toward high-value targets in Pyongyang. This flight profile takes advantage of radar gaps, terrain masking, and reduced radar cross-section, maximizing survivability. Combined with escort jamming platforms and decoys, such a penetration route minimizes exposure while maximizing operational effect.

Complementing this aerial strategy is the Republic of Korea Navy’s Daegu-class frigates, equipped with SSM-750K Haeryong (Sea Dragon) tactical ship-to-surface cruise missiles. These missiles can be programmed for low-altitude flight paths, such as along the Taedong River, enabling them to avoid radar detection while delivering high-lethality payloads like cluster munitions to hardened targets. Fired from the West Sea, such strikes could serve both as a demonstrative posture and, if necessary, a preemptive deterrent against impending North Korean escalation. These naval assets, when integrated into a broader strike package involving unmanned systems and long-endurance ISR platforms, can create persistent dilemmas for North Korean planners.

Moreover, this concept can be layered into broader allied planning. Japan’s expanding strike capabilities — including the acquisition of Tomahawk missiles (expected to become operational later this decade), the modernization of its F-35 fleet, and its integration with US missile defense systems — further strengthen this deterrent architecture. While Japan and South Korea do not operate integrated missile defense networks, recent trilateral agreements have established real-time missile warning data sharing, enhancing situational awareness and crisis coordination. In a fully coordinated posture, a North Korean tactical nuclear strike would not be met merely with rhetorical condemnation or ambiguous threats, but with credible, prompt, and precise disruption of the regime’s ability to escalate further.

This approach differs from traditional preemption in that it is conditional and intelligence-driven — a last-resort option to be used only when clear indicators of imminent nuclear use emerge. Unlike KMPR’s reactive logic, it seeks to dissuade first use by raising the probability that any such order will be interrupted at the command level, before it can be carried out. It is a form of deterrence by denial, not deterrence by punishment.

The Guardian Tiger scenarios, though fictional, underscore a grim but plausible future. But they need not become prophecy. By shifting doctrine from retaliation to preemption, and ensuring that precision strike capabilities are real, survivable, and understood by adversaries, South Korea and its allies can fill the credibility gap in extended deterrence.

Deterrence in the 2020s will not be about symmetry — it will be about timing, survivability, and tailored denial.

Dr. Ju Hyung Kim is President of the Security Management Institute, a defense think tank affiliated with the South Korean National Assembly. He is currently adapting his doctoral dissertation — titled “Japan’s Security Contribution to South Korea, 1950 to 2023” — into a forthcoming book.