A Study on the Terrorism Response System and the Legal Requirements for Military Personnel Under the
Authors:   The Korean Association for Terrorism Studies, Lee Sungdae 
Published: February 2025

There are cases where cooperation between the military and police, which represent national-level coercive power, is necessary. A typical example is when a situation arises where a response is needed to attacks on important national facilities and public-use facilities. The cooperation system between national agencies for important national facilities and public-use facilities was established around the existing Integrated Defense Act. However, there was no small amount of criticism about the existing unsystematic operation system. In this situation, the current “Anti-Terrorism Act for the Protection of the People and Public Safety (abbreviation: Anti-Terrorism Act)” was enacted after a difficult process in the National Assembly in 2016. The Act introduces a new system different from the existing system centered on the Integrated Defense Act by stipulating a counter-terrorism organization. In other words, the Anti-Terrorism Act establishes a counter- terrorism system centered on the National Counter-Terrorism Committee and the Counter-Terrorism Center as counter-terrorism organizations, and stipulates that relevant organizations form and operate counter-terrorism organizations. According to the Anti-Terrorism Act, military forces can be deployed when necessary in response to terrorism. This means that a dangerous situation such as terrorism can occur within our territory by unspecified individuals or forces, targeting government agencies, government officials, and even ordinary citizens, and deploying military forces ultimately means deploying military forces to the civilian sector. However, the Anti-Terrorism Act does not provide specific provisions for this, and only provides some grounds for this in the enforcement ordinance. This article examines the legal requirements for deploying military forces to the civilian sector in a terrorist situation and proposes a direction for its improvement by ① reviewing the counter-terrorism organization under the Anti-Terrorism Act, ② examining the requirements for deploying military forces under the Anti-Terrorism Act, and ③ suggesting improvement measures based on the problems identified through this. According to this, unlike the Integrated Defense Act and other systems established prior to the enactment of the Anti-Terrorism Act, the Anti-Terrorism Act does not provide an appropriate regulatory mechanism for deploying military forces to the civilian sector. It may be an obvious conclusion, but it was pointed out that the relevant provisions of the Anti-Terrorism Act should be organized to at least the extent corresponding to the requirements and procedures of the Constitution and the Martial Law that stipulate martial law, and the relevant provisions of the Integrated Defense Act, and as measures to improve this, ① specifying the situational requirements for deploying military forces, ② prior approval or decision by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and ③ post-control by the National Assembly were suggested.