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North Korea Military Capability, Readiness, Training, and Recent Trends
Beginning in the late 1970s, North Korea began a major
reorganization and modernization of its ground forces. Between
1984 and 1992, the army added about 1,000 tanks, over 2,500
APC/infantry fighting vehicles (IFV), and about 6,000 artillery
tubes or rocket launchers. In 1992 North Korea had about twice
the advantage in numbers of tanks and artillery, and a 1.5-to-1
advantage in personnel over its potential adversaries, the United
States-Republic of Korea defenses to the south. Over 60 percent
of the army was located within 100 kilometers of the DMZ in mid1993 .
North Korea conducts exercises at the division, corps, and
Ministry of People's Armed Forces levels, but almost no
information was available on their size, scope, frequency, or
duration as of mid-1993. Province-level defensive training
measures are more common than large-scale training exercises.
Exercises involving units that consume scarce resources such as
fuel, oil, and lubricants occur even less frequently, inhibiting
the readiness of exploitation forces. Most training occurs at the
regimental level or below, mainly at the company and platoon
levels. There may be integration difficulties at division- and
corps-level operations.
During the 1980s, doctrine and organization were revamped to
increase the lethality, speed, and combat power of the attack.
The shifting of the majority of the North Korean ground forces
closer to the DMZ offers the potential for a more rapid advance.
The reorganization of P'yongyang's exploitation forces in the
1980s suggests that initial attacking forces will be reinforced
by heavier and more mobile units to exploit any breakthroughs.
The North Korean army was not uniformly successful in its
1980s efforts to modernize its forces in support of a high-speed
offensive strategy; more needs to be done to update the army's
mobility, artillery, and air defense elements. North Korea has
increased its tank fleet, but incomplete information suggests
that it remains based largely on dated Soviet technology with
retrofitted indigenous improvements. Although the quality and
quantity of mobile anti-aircraft gun systems remains unknown,
there is no indication of any mobile surface-to-air missile (SAM)
systems other than man-portable systems such as the SA-7 and SA14 or SA-16 (based on parade photographs) entering the inventory
to augment North Korea's static air defense umbrella. Lack of SAM
systems could be a major deficiency in the army's tactical air
defense capability during mobile offensive operations. However,
in artillery systems the army appears to have made the most of
its limited technological base. It has increased the artillery
force while maintaining relative quantitative and range
superiorities over its potential southern adversary and improving
force mobility. In mid-1993 the chances that North Korea will
further modernize its forces appear limited. The technological
level of P'yongyang's industrial base appears to ensure that,
with the possible exception of narrow areas of special interest,
built-in obsolescence will be unavoidable, regardless of how
undesirable.
Data as of June 1993
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