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North Korea MILITARY HERITAGE
North Korea is heavily militarized, with over a million
military personnel. It has been estimated that one out of every
five North Korean men between the ages of sixteen and fifty-four
was in the military in 1992. The active-duty forces account for
at least 6 percent of the population and at least 12 percent of
the male population. These capabilities far exceed any
conceivable defensive requirement.
This force structure and offensive orientation are relatively
new phenomena for the Korean Peninsula. Despite frequent external
military challenges, the military has never enjoyed high social
status in traditional Korea. The traditional value systems of
Buddhism and Confucianism hold the military profession in low
esteem. The
yangban (see Glossary)
class initially had two
official ranks: civil and military officials. The yangban
civil official class, which rose to power in the tenth century
during the Kory Dynasty (918-1392), feared a powerful military
might dominate the government
(see The Origins of the Korean Nation
, ch. 1;
Social Structure and Values
, ch. 2). Rivalry for
power between the two classes resulted in military dominance over
civil officials and contributed to some 100 years of political
instability during the Kory Dynasty. Yi Sng-gye, a former
military general and the founder of the Chosn (Yi) Dynasty
(1392-1910), sought to break this cycle. Once the dynasty was
firmly in place, military officials gradually lost out in the
competition for high government positions and civil officials
were preferred even in senior military commands. As a result,
even through five centuries of Chosn Dynasty rule, the ruling
elite was seldom compelled to strengthen the military enough to
defend the nation. The Chosn Dynasty relied upon its tributary
status with China for national defense. Despite two major
invasions by the Japanese and the Manchus, there is no enduring
military tradition in Korea.
In times of emergency, the general population would form a
volunteer army ( ibyng) to oppose invaders. This practice
continued during the Japanese colonial period (1910-45). Several
anti-Japanese militias, including Kim Il Sung's group of
guerrillas (Kim Il Sung was president of the DPRK and general
secretary of the Korean Workers' Party (KWP) in mid-1993), were
organized by Koreans and operated independently or as part of the
Chinese or Soviet forces.
The origins of military organizations and police forces in
what would become North Korea during the Soviet occupation are
difficult to understand because of limited and contradictory
information, and the confusion of the times. Kim Il Sung
originally operated in northern China in forces associated with
the Chinese communists. He fled to the Soviet Union and later
appeared in Soviet uniform at Wnsan in 1945. The North Korean
military grew out of the eventual merger of the Chinese communist
and Soviet forces
(see The National Division and the Origins of the DPRK
, ch. 1).
There were factional power struggles among the various Korean
troops. The Yan'an faction had its origins in the Korean
nationalist movement in China. Mu Chng, a veteran of the Chinese
Communist Party's Long March (1934-35), established a Korean
military unit (KVA) in Yan'an with Chinese communist backing. Mu
was acknowledged by the Chinese communists as the central leader
of the Korean independence communist movement. The Korean Yan'an
contingent never was massive, but by mid-1941 most of the Korean
anti-Japanese activity had shifted to northern China. Under
Chinese communist protection, the Yan'an faction trained a
substantial number of military and political cadres and was a
political and military force to be reckoned with when it tried to
return to Korea in 1945. Mu was commander of the Second Corps
during the open phase of the Korean War but reportedly escaped
and was purged during the December 1950 plenum because the entry
of the Chinese People's Volunteers into the war made him too
great a threat to Kim Il Sung's faction.
Kim Il Sung's faction, known as the Kapsan faction, did not
operate as an independent anti-Japanese unit in China during
World War II. (Kapsan is the name of a place in North Korea near
the border with Manchuria--as northeast China was then called--
where Kim's forces were headquartered prior to escaping to the
Soviet Far Eastern provinces in 1940.) Rather, the faction was
part of the Soviet Eighty-Eighth Sniper Brigade--a mixed Chinese,
Korean, and Soviet reconnaissance unit stationed in Khabarovsk.
Kim Il Sung, commander of one of the battalions, was a captain in
the Soviet Army when he reentered Korea in 1945.
Kim Il Sung's Kapsan faction dominated the military
leadership even before the Korean War. The role of the Korean
People's Army (KPA) in the interfactional struggles of the 1950s,
during which Kim Il Sung solidified his control of the KWP and
the state, is unclear. With the victory of Kim's faction, all
remaining Yan'an (Chinese) faction members were purged.
The first political-military school in North Korea, the
P'yongyang Military Academy, headed by Kim Chaek, an ally of Kim
Il Sung, was founded in October 1945 under Soviet guidance to
train people's guards, or public security units. In 1946
graduates of the school entered regular police and public
security/constabulary units. These lightly armed security forces
included followers of Kim Il Sung and returned veterans from
China. Many veterans from China who had tried to return home
immediately after World War II were stopped by Soviet forces at
the border. Some were disarmed and allowed to enter North Korea;
the rest were returned to Manchuria, where the force was expanded
and tempered in the Chinese civil war. While the Chinese-
sponsored forces were growing into maturity in Manchuria, Kim Il
Sung secured control of the military and security apparatus in
North Korea with Soviet sponsorship. His dominant position within
the armed forces was crucial to securing control of the state.
Soviet forces withdrew in 1948, leaving an approximately
60,000-man Korean army and a larger paramilitary force that
included people's guards, border guards, and railroad security
forces. On February 8, 1948, the North Korean Provisional
Committee officially announced the formation of the KPA and the
establishment of the Ministry of People's Armed Forces, which
controlled a central guard battalion, two divisions, and an
independent mixed brigade.
The Soviet Union fostered the development of the KPA and
supplied weapons and equipment, along with temporarily
transferred advisers and personnel who helped to draft the
operational plans for the southward invasion in 1950. The core
combat units of the KPA, however, traced their origins to the
small Korean Volunteer Army (KVA), which had fought with the
Chinese communist Eighth Route Army. Aided by a massive influx of
Soviet matériel, the KPA grew to between 150,000 and 200,000 men
by the time it invaded South Korea in June 1950. As many as
10,000 personnel had received training in the Soviet Union,
including ethnic Koreans and Soviet citizens and soldiers. An
estimated 40,000 men were battle-hardened veterans of the Chinese
civil war who had returned to the north in 1949 and formed the
main force units of the KPA.
Information uncovered in 1992 confirmed that both the Soviet
Union and China were aware and supportive of North Korea's
invasion plans in 1949. Yu Song Cho, deputy chief of staff of the
KPA at the time of the invasion, revealed that Soviet military
advisers went so far as to rewrite his initial invasion order.
Russian statements in 1992 revealed that Soviet air defense and
fighter units totalling 26,000 men participated in the Korean
War.
The initial stages of the Korean War almost brought victory
to the KPA, which had excellent capabilities and successfully
applied breakthrough and exploitation techniques. However, the
intervention of the United States-led United Nations (UN) forces,
the UN Command, denied the KPA victory on the battlefield.
Fighting on the Pusan defense perimeter began on August 1 and
continued through to the Inch'n landing on September 15. These
defeats broke the KPA and virtually destroyed it as a cohesive
force.
China, finding the UN Command occupation of North Korea
unacceptable and its diplomatic efforts ignored, announced the
formation of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army in October 1950.
The Chinese People's Liberation Army massed some 850,000
"volunteer troops" north of the Yalu River, launched a major
offensive in November 1950, and succeeded in driving the UN
Command forces southward. Only the intervention of the Chinese
People's Volunteers and the help of massive Soviet material
assistance enabled the KPA to reconstitute itself. The front
eventually stabilized close to the thirty-eighth parallel.
Hostilities ended inconclusively with an armistice agreement
in July 1953, signed by the commanders of the KPA, the UN
Command--which included ROK forces--and the Chinese People's
Volunteer Army. Technically, the peninsula remained in a state of
war restrained by an armistice. The subject of replacing the
armistice with a formal peace agreement was mentioned in the 1991
Agreement on Reconciliation, Nonaggression, Exchanges, and
Cooperation between North Korea and South Korea, but remained
unresolved in mid-1993. KPA losses in the Korean War, called the
Fatherland Liberation War by North Korea, totaled more than half
a million persons, although North Korea has not released figures.
The war also resulted in the virtual destruction of North Korea's
economy and infrastructure
(see Economic Development and Structural Change
, ch. 3). Chinese troops remained in North Korea
until October 1958.
After the war, the KPA was reconstituted, but until the early
1960s rebuilding military strength remained less important than
economic reconstruction. The signing of treaties of mutual
assistance with the Soviet Union and China in 1961 and the
promulgation of the Four Military Guidelines in 1962 brought the
military back to a position of primacy, which it retained as of
mid-1993.
Data as of June 1993
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