As Mins points out, Seoul is also starting to put its own imagery satellites into orbit. Korea expects to complete its space center early this year and launch its first space launch vehicle from it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naro_Space_Center). This center will also allow the ROK to launch classified payloads without having to expose them to another country. Until this center is complete, Seoul has no option other than to rely on other countries to put it satellites into space. The US launched the Arirang-1 and Russia launched the Arirang-2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arirang-2

Launching a satellite equipped with a camera that has a smaller resolution, isn’t technically that far away.

well i would wonder if the AF is responsible for shooting down their own dead satellites as China did. Could a laser be good for this?

A laser might be able to do it (the most likely candidate is one mounted on a 747 or other high-flying vessel, in order to minimize the atmospheric distortion), but for dead satellites, it’s really much better just to leave them in orbit. After all, one big, uncontrollable object is much better than several thousand smaller ones. I’m sure that every time anyone shoots down a satellite, there’s probably some guy in NASA that loses it, ‘cuz they’ve suddenly got that many more objects that they need to track (in order to keep clear stuff like space shuttles, international space stations, and other satellites) that are just that much harder to track. Unless you’ve got a satellite that’s de-orbiting anyhow, and you’re worried that it might hit the lottery and actually damage something other than empty ground or an ocean, shooting down a dead satellite causes a lot more problems than it would propose to solve. More likely, the real purpose of a system like this would be either to A) knock out communications and surveillance satellites in the event of an actual war or B) shoot down missiles.

There is also an Israeli system from Rafael called Trophy. It is currently being tested on a Stryker AFV and I think it is also installed on a Merkava MBT.

http://www.rafael.co.il/market.....;docID=963

From a magazine I read, the ROKA considered procuring the Trophy but dropped it because it couldn’t protect armored vehicles from ATGWs that are attacking the top armor of armored vehicles.

As for the XK-2 it currently only has a passive defense system, but an active defense system is included in its future plans. The active defense system will be based on the Russian Arena.

But anti-artillery/rockets lasers huh? Wouldn’t that significantly reduce the chance of “Seoul turning into sea of flames” scenario?

Assuming that a) the ROK government and Doosan don’t give up on the R&D and b) it works as designed.

The Russians invented it–the Arena system (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.....ion_System)–but it destroys anti-tank guided missiles before they impact a tank, not RPGs. The South Koreans use a similar active defense system on the recently completed XK-2 main battle tank (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XK2).

But anti-artillery/rockets lasers huh? Wouldn’t that significantly reduce the chance of “Seoul turning into sea of flames” scenario?

And didn’t an Israeli company already invent something like that? It was to be on a tank and would shoot down incoming rpgs…