HONGSEONG — South Chungcheong Province is stepping up efforts to bring the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) to Nonsan and Gyeryong, a cluster the province calls its defense hub.
The province said on the 27th that it plans to concentrate its efforts on attracting KIDA, following the government's recent announcement of a plan to move the Ministry of National Defense to Sejong.
KIDA, now based in Seoul, is a government-funded research institute that has served as a leading think tank on defense policy. Its work covers research on the security environment and basic defense policy; defense manpower, personnel, welfare and mobilization; weapons system selection, acquisition and defense industry policy; defense industry policy and regulation; and projections of weapons system development trends and how to apply them.
The province had already placed KIDA on its list of target defense institutions and pursued the relocation, but the institute had maintained that it should stay in the greater Seoul area, citing reasons such as geographic proximity to the defense ministry.
With the defense ministry included in the government's Oct. 13 plan to relocate central administrative agencies to Sejong, a move by KIDA has become unavoidable. The site of KIDA's Seoul building was also included in the government's housing supply plan announced in January this year.
The province believes no other location matches the conditions offered by Nonsan and Gyeryong. Gyeryong is home to Gyeryongdae, which houses the headquarters of the Army, Navy and Air Force, while Nonsan hosts a cluster of major defense-related institutions including the Korea National Defense University, the Army Training Center and the Army Aviation School. The South Chungcheong national defense industrial complex is scheduled to open in Nonsan in 2029.
If KIDA relocates to Nonsan and Gyeryong, the province expects a full-cycle defense ecosystem to take shape, linking policy research, education, policy demand, and testing and production.
The province also expects the move to make defense research more grounded in the field and more widely used, by feeding frontline needs into policy research and connecting research results to policy and industry.
The province said it has already secured a leased building and a site where KIDA could move immediately. To attract KIDA and other defense institutions, it has enacted an ordinance, run a special committee, commissioned research studies and held policy forums.
The province said it will closely watch moves by the government, the National Assembly and defense institutions to respond at the right time, while continuing to petition the central government and strengthening its joint response system with the cities of Nonsan and Gyeryong.
"We will make the case for bringing KIDA here with a distinctive argument that links Nonsan and Gyeryong's defense infrastructure with their defense industry base," a provincial official said.
KIDA is organized under a board of directors and a president, with units including the Future Strategy Office, the Defense Artificial Intelligence Policy Research Office, the Planning and Coordination Bureau and the Center for Security and Strategy. Its staff numbered 487 as of early this year.