The economic effects of military spending on growth in South Korea are a concern since maintaining a balance between military spending and the nation's security policy is crucial given special circumstances with North Korea. In this study, I examined the impact of military spending on economic growth in South Korea applying Vector Autoregressive model. Results suggest that: i) military spending has smaller impact on GDP growth than non-military spending, and ii) any increase of military spending and non-military spending generally align with traditional economic theories of a crowding-out effect and a negative impact on the current account balance. These findings suggest that, despite maintaining a relatively healthy economic growth, a greater rate of growth could have been achieved had the government afforded non-military spending a higher priority and that the expansion of military budgets in South Korea is expected to impede the country's economic growth performance.