North Korea's Military Strategy

The ideological underpinnings and strategic culture of North Korea's regime emphasize the dominance of militarism epitomized by a strong army. Reunification of the peninsula on North Korean terms remains the foremost strategic goal of the regime. North Korea's severe and probably irreversible economic decline over the past decade places the regime's survival in question. Therefore, North Korean leaders must see reunification on their terms not only as their historic purpose but also as essential to long-term survival. Continued investment in a powerful military organized and deployed to execute an offensive military strategy, despite its drain on a moribund economy, strongly suggests that North Korean leaders perceive its military as probably the only remaining instrument for realization of that goal. But they must realize that time is not on their side. In The Origins of Major War, Dale Copeland sets forth a strong argument that a state facing irreversible economic decline but still possessing military power vis-a-vis a competing state may resort to preventive war, especially if it perceives its own decline as deep and inevitable. One might counter by arguing that Pyongyang must know that it lacks any military superiority over the United States, which guarantees the defense of South Korea through the security treaty. North Korea's continued insistence that the question of reunification can be settled only among Koreans, and that the withdrawal of all foreign forces is essential to that process, suggests that Pyongyang would prefer to deal militarily with the South Korean army alone. North Korea's military strategy remains an offensive strategy designed to achieve reunification by force. While the KPA has deployed forces to protect its coasts, airfields, and the North Korean capital of Pyongyang, the overall forward deployment of forces and, particularly, forward deployment of large numbers of long-range artillery underscore the offensive nature of its strategy. ; Published in Parameters, v33 p68-81, Spring 2003.