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North Korea Relations with the Third World
Since the mid-1960s, North Korea has been an ardent and
increasingly resourceful supplier of military equipment and
expertise to governments and resistance movements throughout the
Third World. Military assistance has been provided in the form of
equipment transfers, in-country training, and advisory groups
(see
table 12, Appendix).
Beginning in the early 1970s, P'yongyang decided to use
military assistance programs as an instrument of foreign policy.
Ideological concerns incline North Korea to extend military and
financial aid to national liberation movements, guerrilla forces,
and terrorist groups. Although its small economic base limits the
scale of its involvement in external military assistance, North
Korea is nevertheless relatively active. Foreign military
assistance efforts concentrate on comparatively inexpensive
training programs. The true extent of North Korea's involvement
in providing military assistance may never be known, however,
because of its obsessive secrecy and the inherently covert nature
of radical and revolutionary groups.
By 1990 North Korea had provided military training to groups
in sixty-two countries--twenty-five in Africa, nineteen in
Central and South America, nine in Asia, seven in the Middle
East, and two in Europe. A cumulative total of more than 5,000
foreign personnel have been trained in North Korea, and over
7,000 military advisers, primarily from the Reconnaissance
Bureau, have been dispatched to some forty-seven countries. As of
mid-1993, military advisers from North Korea were in
approximately twelve African countries. North Korea is a
convenient alternative to the superpowers for military
assistance.
External military assistance also includes weapons
agreements. Equipment transfers in the 1980s alone totaled nearly
US$4 billion. In Asia economic, technical, and military aid was
channeled to Hanoi during the Vietnam War, but the level of aid,
and whether it included any manpower support, is open to
speculation. North Korea also offered strong verbal support to
the "struggle of the Vietnamese people against imperialism." In
1971 the entire North Korean diplomatic mission to Sri Lanka was
expelled for giving financial support to the revolutionary
People's Liberation Front (Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna). Members of
the Thai Communist Party received military training in North
Korea in 1976. Pakistan was sold basic ground forces equipment in
the late 1970s and early 1980s.
In Africa support was provided to the Popular Front for the
Liberation of Saguia el-Hamra and Río de Oro (Polisario)
guerrillas operating in the Western Sahara against Morocco and to
those in Algeria and Chad. Support came in the form of training
and small arms supplied in modest quantities. In the mid-1970s,
modest amounts of military equipment were supplied and training
was provided to governments or revolutionary groups operating in
Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Madagascar,
Mozambique, the Seychelles, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and
Zimbabwe.
In the 1980s, North Korea's highest profile military advisory
activity was in Zimbabwe. Beginning in 1981, North Korea equipped
and trained the Zimbabwean army's Fifth Brigade for
counterinsurgency and internal security duties. P'yongyang
provided almost all the equipment and about US$18 million worth
of small arms and ammunition. The mission was not successful,
however, and by 1986 the Zimbabwean government had the unit
retrained by British military instructors.
In South America and Central America, P'yongyang provided
financial aid, military training, and small arms in modest
quantities to antigovernment groups operating in Argentina,
Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay,
Peru, and Venezuela during the 1970s. Documents seized during the
United States 1983 military intervention in Grenada also revealed
plans for North Korean military assistance there, to include
small arms, two patrol boats, and ammunition. Military relations
with the Sandinista government in Nicaragua included the transfer
of patrol boats and other unconfirmed aid. In April 1986, North
Korea sold rifles to the government of Peru.
There are indications that North Korean advisers were
involved in actual military operations in the Middle East,
including reports that North Korean pilots flew Egyptian aircraft
during the October 1973 War. North Koreans also are alleged to
have operated Libyan tanks during the 1977 Egyptian-Libyan
conflict, although North Korea has never admitted that its
advisers participated in combat overseas. Reliable reports
suggest that as many as 100 North Korean pilots and air crews
were in Libya training pilots on Soviet-supplied aircraft
beginning in 1979 and continuing for several years and in some
cases were actually involved in operational activities. Support
to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) began in the late
1970s and included military training in North Korea and the
supply of small amounts of arms. PLO support still may have been
continuing in mid-1993.
By the 1980s, many of North Korea's defense industry
limitations had been overcome, and by the early 1990s North Korea
was capable of supplying a much wider range of weapons and
training. Although ideology remains a significant component of
military assistance, economic considerations have become
increasingly important in weapons transfers. Arms sales to the
Middle East garner North Korea hard currency, alternative oil
sources, and access to restricted technology. Military equipment
transfers have been expanded to include high value-added military
equipment such as Scud missiles, antitank guided missiles, tanks
and armored vehicles, self-propelled and towed heavy field
artillery, and naval vessels.
For the decade ending in 1987, the United States Arms Control
and Disarmament Agency estimated that North Korea earned US$3.9
billion from arms transfers to over thirty countries in Africa,
the Middle East, and Central America, and spent some US$2.8
billion on arms imports from China and the Soviet Union.
Purchases included aircraft, missiles, trucks, radars, and
command, control, communications, and intelligence equipment.
Exports to Iran of approximately US$2.8 million comprised 71
percent of total weapons exports. Arms sales during the peak year
1982 represented 38 percent of North Korea's total exports. Arms
exports between 1981 and 1987 averaged around 27 percent of
exports annually, with a 1981 high of 40 percent and a 1986 low
of 14 percent.
The Middle East is the major market for North Korean arms,
with most sales going to Iran and Libya. Other Middle East
clients include Syria, the People's Democratic Republic of Yemen
(South Yemen), the PLO, and the Popular Front for the Liberation
of Palestine. Sales to Iran peaked in the first three years of
the Iran-Iraq War when Iran ordered almost US$1 billion worth of
arms from North Korea; by the end of the war, some US$2.8 billion
worth of arms had been purchased. The first Iranian arms
agreement in late 1980 covered light infantry weapons and
ammunition. Follow-on orders, however, quickly expanded the scope
of purchases. These arms transfers also became the basis for
cooperation in military production, particularly in short-range
ballistic missiles. North Korea also trained the Iranians on
Chinese mobile surface-to-air-missiles and the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards in unconventional warfare. After the end of
the Iran-Iraq war, continuing cooperation indicated that
technology transfers were still going on.
North Korean-Egyptian cooperation continues to grow. The two
nations are believed to have cooperated on each other's
battlefield ballistic missile programs. Agreements with Egypt
involve replacement parts for Soviet equipment and cooperative
efforts in missile technology. In 1980 Egypt signed a US$40
million arms agreement for various ground systems. In 1984 the
two countries signed a joint agreement for the development of the
Egyptian variant of the SA-2b/Guideline missile. The two
countries also may have cooperated on the Egyptian Eagle/SAKR-80
and the BADR-2000/Condor II missile programs.
Training and advisory groups remain an important part of the
military assistance policy. In 1988 South Korean sources
estimated that North Korea was offering a wide range of military
and unconventional warfare training at thirty facilities for
anywhere from three to eighteen months. Advisory groups were
active in thirty-four countries in 1988, mostly in Asia and
Africa. The size of the advisory groups ranges from as few as
twenty to over 100 persons.
In the early 1990s, opportunities for North Korean military
assistance programs began declining because of the disintegration
of the Soviet Union and its hardline Marxist-Leninist bloc, and
the end of several long-running military disputes such as the
Iran-Iraq War and conflicts in Yemen, Ethiopia, and Cambodia.
Arms exports remain technologically backward, but by offering
systems at comparatively low prices and showing little concern
about the buyer, P'yongyang has gained a niche in markets where
compatible Soviet equipment dominates. North Korea's motivation
has increasingly shifted from a revolutionary ideological
underpinning to cooperative activity with other states that are
uncomfortable with the emerging constraints on arms transfers and
the dominance of the United States in the new world order.
Data as of June 1993
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