The Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas is seen from South Korea's Dora Observatory in May 2017. (Aaron Kidd/Stars and Stripes)
South Korea’s heavily fortified border with North Korea has long relied on young troops standing watch from remote guard posts along the Demilitarized Zone.
But that decades-old image may soon fade as Seoul invests heavily in artificial intelligence and unmanned systems to offset troop shortages and modernize its military.
The Ministry of National Defense announced plans last month to reduce the number of troops stationed at guard posts near the DMZ from 22,000 to 6,000 by 2040, replacing many of them with AI-enabled surveillance systems.
“We can no longer maintain the old system in which hundreds of thousands of troops stand in lines along the wire fence, as it is physically impossible,” Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back said in an April 20 report by the Korea JoongAng Daily.
The move reflects a broader effort by South Korea and its U.S. ally to incorporate AI and autonomous systems into everything from border security to battlefield operations and troop health.
The shift is driven in large part by demographics.
A South Korean soldier takes a drone-lethality course at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, May 7, 2026. (Geonwoo Park/U.S. Army)
South Korea’s active-duty force declined from about 560,000 troops in 2019 to 450,000 in July 2025, according to the Ministry of National Defense and Military Manpower Administration. The number of eligible male conscripts could fall to 100,000 annually by 2045, the Korea Herald reported Aug. 20.
“The declining number of young people available for military service will inevitably place pressure on the traditional manpower-based force structure,” Jang Won-joon, a professor at Jeonbuk National University’s Department of Advanced Defense Technology and Industry, told Stars and Stripes in a May 5 email.
To help compensate, the defense ministry has launched initiatives such as “500,000 Drone Warriors,” a program announced in September that will provide unmanned aerial systems training to every military conscript.
Jang said a more technologically advanced South Korean military could strengthen the alliance by improving independent surveillance, decision-making and precision-strike capabilities while remaining in sync with U.S. forces.
The two countries “should move beyond traditional combined exercises and begin developing shared AI-enabled operational concepts,” he wrote.
U.S. military leaders increasingly view AI as central to future operations on the peninsula.
“AI and autonomous systems represent a fundamental shift in the character of warfare and will play a decisive role in future operations,” Brig. Gen. Kurt Helphinstine, 7th Air Force’s deputy commander, said in a statement emailed May 1 by the command’s public affairs office.
“Out-computing the adversary translates directly to out-thinking them,” he wrote.
U.S. and South Korean soldiers take a drone-lethality course at Camp Humphreys, South Korea, May 7, 2026. (Geonwoo Park/U.S. Army)
Helphinstine said AI-enabled systems can overwhelm enemy defenses with low-cost drones, reduce risks to pilots and improve surveillance and targeting.
“For 7th Air Force, proliferating cost-efficient, massed autonomous systems serves as a significant force multiplier, directly strengthening deterrence by denial on the Korean Peninsula,” he wrote.
The technology is also finding applications outside combat operations.
Integrating AI is “a critical priority” for Eighth Army, Col. Melan Penafiel Salas, the command’s cyber electromagnetic activities director, said in a statement emailed May 22 by the public affairs office.
One example is an AI-enabled mosquito trap being tested through a partnership between Army medics and South Korean researchers after troops contracted malaria while training last year.
The system combines traditional mosquito traps with cameras and AI software trained to identify local mosquito species with more than 90% accuracy, reducing identification times from up to two weeks to about 90 seconds.
“This deployable capability transforms slow, manual mosquito monitoring into live, automated species-specific reporting, giving commanders timely, data-driven insights to protect service members across the peninsula,” Salas said.
