▲ Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back (C) and Rep. Han Byung-do (R), the acting leader of the ruling Democratic Party, attend a consultative meeting at the National Assembly on July 16, 2026, to discuss the establishment of an integrated military academy for the Army, Navy and Air Force. (Yonhap)

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SEOUL, July 16 (Yonhap) -- The government and the ruling Democratic Party (DP) on Thursday agreed to swiftly push ahead with the establishment of an integrated military academy of the Army, Navy and Air Force, a move they say would sharply enhance their country's defense capabilities in the fast changing environment.

The two sides held a policy consultation meeting at the National Assembly and agreed to build the envisioned academy at Jaundae, a compound of military training and education facilities in Daejeon, about 140 kilometers south of Seoul.

"The National Military Academy will adopt an academic system that provides autonomy and maximizes each cadet's potential," Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back said during a briefing after the meeting.

"It will be located in the heart of country's science and technology sector, with an exceptional intellectual environment that includes universities such as the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, as well as the Korea Aerospace Research Institute and Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute," he added.

"Unfortunately, the current system of having separate academies of the Army, Navy and Air Force faces a number of practical limitations," Rep. Han Byung-do, the acting leader of the DP, said at the start of the government-ruling party meeting.

Rep. Han said setting up the unified academy to train future defense leaders is a "task that can no longer be put off," stressing that the DP will spare no effort to help develop the institution into a world-class military academy.

Ahn expressed his commitment to military reforms in his opening remarks, saying, "As the first civilian defense minister in 64 years, I have never expected the path toward defense reform to be an easy one, but I also never thought it would be impossible."

The government and the DP agreed to raise the proportion of civilian professors at the new academy to at least 50 percent and create a dedicated task force to oversee the establishment of the academy and accelerate reform in defense education.

The move comes as the Lee Jae Myung government has been seeking to unify the military academies into a single institution as part of efforts to pool talented future cadets amid the country's demographic decline and better respond to evolving warfare.

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