North Korea’s Military Strategy

Abstract

Simply put, military strategies derive from national strategies intended to achieve goals and conditions that satisfy national interests. Military strategies reflect capabilities vis-a-vis potential opponents, resource constraints, and desired end states. North Korea is no different; its military strategy is a reflection of Pyongyang's national goals. Military strategies also reflect what one might call cultural rules of engagement; i.e., they are based on socially constructed views unique to nation. (1) Pyongyang's Foremost National Goal Historically, Pyongyang's foremost goal has been reunification of Korean Peninsula on North Korean terms. The regime's constitution describes reunification as the supreme national task, (2) and it remains a consistently pervasive theme in North Korean media. However, despite what North Koreans have continued to tell us for past five decades, outside observers and specialists differ greatly over exactly what North Korea's goals really are. Since at least mid-1990s, there has been a widespread view among Korea observers that, because of severe economic decline, food shortages, and related problems, regime survival has replaced reunification as Pyongyang's most pressing objective. (3) Further, these observers argue, despite its rhetoric, North Korea realizes that reunification through conquest of South Korea is no longer possible. (4) There are also some who argue that North Korean leadership has recognized need to initiate substantial change in order to survive in international community and is embarking on economic reform, reconciliation with South Korea, and reduction of military tensions. In addition to goals of regime survival, reform, and reconciliation, there is another explanatory view of North Korea's foremost national goal that has been held by a minority of observers for several decades (and has been a consistent theme of North Korean media)--defense against foreign invasion by imperialist aggressors and their lac key running dogs. (5) Adherents of this view believe that North Korean leadership genuinely fears an attack by United States and South Korea and maintains a strong military purely for defense. (6) President Bush's reference to axis of evil in his January 2002 State of Union address, announcement of plans to adopt a pre-emptive military strategy, and increasing numbers of statements by Administration officials about US intentions to employ military force to remove Iraq's Saddam Hussein from power have added support to defense explanation. Some have also argued that enhancement of military by Kim Jong II (7) serves primarily to strengthen his domestic political power base. While there is an obvious element of truth in this proposition, it is an oversimplification that distorts true role of military strength in regime. Others accept North Korea's word that reunification remains primary goal and argue that Pyongyang's long-term strategy to dominate peninsula by any means has not changed. They cite North Korea's continued focus of scarce resources to military, (8) development of longer-range ballistic missiles, and recent revelation by Pyongyang that it seeks a nuclear weapons capability9 as indications that reunification remains foremost goal. The preponderance of evidence clearly supports conclusion that reunification under leadership of Kim Jong II, by whatever means, remains the supreme national task. North Korean media rhetoric continues to extol reunification under Kim. A parallel but closely related theme is that of completing revolution. When North Korean leaders speak of achieving socialist revolution in our country, they mean unification of entire peninsula on their terms. (10) The Kim regime in North Korea considers entire peninsula as constituting its sovereign territory. It does not recognize South Korea as being a separate nation, nor government of South Korea as legitimate. …