The military of the Republic of Korea plans to set up a new team in charge of cyberoperations in January under the wing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Yonhap News Agency reported on Tuesday, citing military officials.

The Cyber Tactics Department will be established to serve as a control center of military cyberoperations, a military official was quoted as saying. The Joint Chiefs of Staff chief will control and command all military operations in cyberspace, the official said.

It came as part of efforts to change cyberoperations from defensive to proactive and preventive. Another military official was quoted as saying that the military is seeing cyberwarfare as becoming real, noting that it needs to pre-emptively detect and destroy cyberattacks from a certain country or unspecified forces.

The Military Cyber Command, a separate cyberwarfare unit under the army, reportedly plans to increase human resources from the current 600 to 1,000, while developing the cyberweapon system for both attack and defense.

Xinhua

(China Daily 12/24/2014 page12)