The Republic of Korea Army plans to rebuild how it guards the front line, replacing soldiers on the fence with sensors, robots and drones, and cutting the guard force to about a third of its current size by 2040.
The plan was presented on 19 October 2026 at Army Headquarters in Gyeryongdae, during the National Assembly National Defense Committee’s annual audit, and reported by Oh Dong-ryong of Newspim. According to the briefing, the army will “transform the manpower-centered GOP and coastal guard systems into an AI-based, science-and-technology-enabled guard system” through structural reform and upgraded guard technologies.
A Dedicated Guard Force
The reorganization comes in two steps. First, dedicated GOP (General Outpost) guard battalions will be formed at division level. The first two stand up on 1 October 2027 in the 5th Division on the central front and the 22nd Division on the east coast. Based on how those pilots perform, the army will then create GOP guard brigades at corps level.
Today, brigades under frontline divisions split up GOP sectors and rotate onto the fence. Under the new structure, a guard brigade in each corps would take sole responsibility for frontline guarding. Units in the FEBA (Forward Edge of the Battle Area) behind the GOP would stop rotating into guard duty and focus on training and combat readiness. To fill the gap, the army plans to add one new infantry battalion to each forward brigade in the FEBA area (Newspim).
Machines in Place of Manpower
The Ministry of National Defense plans to cut guard personnel in stages from about 22,000 now to about 6,000 by 2040. Surveillance will be carried by quadruped robots and reconnaissance drones; response by suicide drones, an integrated counter-drone system and fixed remote-controlled firing stations. The timeline set out at the audit is (Newspim):
- 2028: finish upgrading the current technology-based guard system
- 2031: convert coastal guarding to an AI-based system
- 2033: complete an AI command-and-control system for guard operations
- 2040: complete an “AI-based, manned-unmanned integrated” guard system, the target year of the next defense reform
The reason given is plain: the pool of available manpower is falling sharply.
Every Unit a “Smart Unit”
At the same audit, the army said every unit will become an AI-based “intelligent smart unit” by 2034 (Newspim). Personnel and logistics administration, tactical situation awareness, drone control and target processing are to be merged onto a single mobile device, alongside agentic AI tools meant to spot unusual conditions in unit operations and prevent safety accidents. Pilots at the 9th Division and supply depots were in place by 2024; the system expands to corps-level units in 2027, including one pilot each at a GOP and a guard post, before reaching brigade-level and remote units after 2029. Neither briefing gave a budget figure.
Why It Matters
This is one of the clearest cases yet of a frontline army redesigning a core mission around demographics. Korea is not adding robots to a manned line; it is planning a line that needs roughly 16,000 fewer soldiers, and freeing forward combat brigades from fence duty in the process.
The open questions are the ones that matter in a crisis: how the system performs against deception, jamming and saturation, who holds authority over remote fires along the most heavily armed border in the world, and whether funding follows the timeline. The 2027 pilots in the 5th and 22nd Divisions will be the first real test. For allied forces facing similar personnel limits, the Korean approach of using automation to take over persistent guard tasks while concentrating scarce soldiers on combat readiness is a model worth watching.