• Convergence Security Journal
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.149-161
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• 2018

The private military company(PMC) or the private military industry may be one of the most important, but little understood developments in security studies to have taken place over the last decade. This new industry, where firms not only supply the goods of warfare, but rather fulfill many of the professional service functions, is not only significant to the defence community, but has wider ramifications for global politics and warfare. The private military industry emerged in the early 1990s. Its underlying cause was the confluence of three momentous dynamics - the end of the Cold War and the vacuum this produced in the market of security, transformations in the nature of warfare, and the normative rise of privatization. In order to introduce MPFs(Military Provider Firms) into Korea, where in principle private citizens are prohibited to own a gun, unlike the United States, a special law should be enacted which allows them to possess weapons and fight in combat. Therefore, the National Assembly of Korea has been submitting and discussing "the Act on the Prevention and Conduction of Practice of Piracy" since 2014.