With the late 1980's collapse of socialist governments in Eastern Europe, internal economic difficulties in the mid 1990s, and the death of its leader Kim IL Sung, North Korea seemed to face a severe crisis. However, North Korea is rather strengthening its current system by conducting missile launches and nuclear experiments, despite its economic difficulties and voice of concern from the international community. The Nuclear weapons and missiles developed by North Korea is not only posing direct security threat to us but also acting as a major force driving Northeast Asian nations into an arms race.
Since the beginning of his administration, Kim Jung Il has been focusing on increment of asymmetrical military strength on his military development plan in order to keep its military power level superior than that of South Korea. Characterized by quantitativebased military strength buildup as its nuclear development program represents, such buildup of military strength allowed North Korea to supplement its existing military strategies. In other words, such military buildup transformed KImIlSung era's preemptive attack strategy, lighting war strategy, and a mixed war strategy into mass destruction strategy, lighting war strategy, and cyber warfare strategy.
There are several reasons why KimJungIl chose such military strategy. First, is the change of the aspect of modern warfare. As recent regional warfares demonstrate, the modern warfare is changing to a shortterm intensive pinpoint strike warfare through revolutionary increment of destructibility on targets and longdistance pinpoint strike ability as a result of the improvement in weapon system. Such change in aspects of modern warfare made KimJungIl to face limits in previous method of war preparation, and therefore he began to feel the need to develop new military strategies. Second, is the limits of conventional armed forces. As North Korea's deteriorated equipment are relatively inapt in quality or management perspective for modern warfares, in addition to the fact that North Korea is losing in arms race with South Korea, North Korea needed to develop a strategy to keep its military superiority over South Korea.
"Massdestruction Strategy" can be understood as having its goal in guaranteeing victory in case of breakout of the war. In 1994, North Korea faced its biggest crisis with the U.S' "bombing threat on North Korea's nuclear facilities." Such threat crucially motivated KimJungIl to develop strategy that has its goal in selfrestricting threats from the outside. "The lighting war strategy" which adopted KimIlSung's strategy, is predicted to be kept in the future when we consider that North Korea has large number of airforce, and armed and mechanized unit apt for speed battle, and that its units are organized for the maximum mobility. "Cyber warfare strategy" is an applicable strategy considering that North Korea maintains a large number of expert hacking agents and that many developed countries such as the U.S. and South Korea have their military strategies relying heavily on highintellect computers.
If North Korea brings about a war in the Korean Peninsula again, North Korea seems likely to pursue a different military strategy in contrast to aspects of the previous war because they acknowledges that its military firepower is inferior to that of KoreaU.S. combined forces. In other words, North Korea will pursue a socalled "Fourth Generation of War." In this type of the war, North Korea will try to overcome the inferiority in its firepower by creating chaos within South Korea through the use of special forces and Northsympathizing population within South Korea, then heavily striking the strategic center of gravity "Seoul" with WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction) including nuclear and chemical weapons and missiles, and then making use of massive regular forces to penetrate frontier lines and occupy strategic objectives swiftly. The Cheonan navy ship incident and shelling provocation on the Yeonpyeong Island occurred in 2010 in the West Sea both serve as exemplars demonstrating that North Korea is preparing warfare based on the idea of "Fourth Generation of War."
If North Korea provokes a second "Korean War," the reasons could be the following: ① if a change is brought into political command structure such as the change in North Korean leadership as a result of power struggle following the death of KimJungIl. ② if a serious threat is posed on the current North Korean regime as a result of continuing economic difficulties, food problem, and the problems regarding North Korea's maintenance of nuclear weapon. ③ if North Korea misjudges its relative military strength such as overestimating the capability of its asymmetrical military strength. ④ if North Korea recognizes the circumstances as a golden chance as antiU.S. sentiment heightens and leftist force gains momentum so that KoreaU.S. alliance weakens or leads into a crisis. Above all, the most possible scenario is the first one, the change in the political command structure. This is because internal conflicts could possibly arise considering that Kim Jung Eun, the successor of the dead Kim Jung Il, does not possess political stability yet.
North Korea's idea of conduct of the war judges that an allout war and an attrition warfare are unfavorable considering its current economic difficulties and inferior military strength to that of KoreaU.S. Combined forces. Therefore, North Korea seems to focus on conduct of war for a shortterm swift warfare. Especially, speed battle sparked by the preemptive strike with the purpose of preventing the U.S. augmentation forces would take a crucial role deciding the result of the war. For such reasons, North Korea has organized its force placing strong Army Groups in the front lines, rear forces in the corp units in order to enable locally independent operations in the rear area, and additionally placed antiamphibious capabilities in the East and West sea and defense capability to protect communication lines. However, its placement of mass unit disposition in the frontline area around the DMZ have weak points as our preemptive attack would bring them severe casualties.
In peacetime, North Korea would ceaselessly threaten South Korea taking use of its WMDs such as nuclear weapons, missiles, and chemical weapons in order to threaten us, seize the initiative and to settle problems with regards to relations with South Korea. In other words, North Korea would invoke a local provocation in order to intensify military tensions by invading the NLL (Northern Limit Line) in the West Sea or invoking a local provocation near DMZ lines. From this, North Korea would try to force its demand on the negotiation table or build up anxiety regarding security issues in order to degrade South Korea's reliability in the international society, which would deal a severe blow to its economy.
In order to deal with such military threats from North Korea, the best method is to inwardly develop a symmetric military capability matching the North's military power and outwardly take diplomatic actions through international cooperations especially with the U.S. and China to prevent the North's misjudgement. For this, we need to develop strategic weapons with sufficient restraint capability so that North Korea would not take any military adventure on the Korean Peninsula. We also need to modify our existing operational concept from the current defensiveoriented operation concept to the concept capable of preemptive strike as a response for the sign of evident attack from North Korea. The Korean Peninsula has short strategic depth and the strategic center of gravity, Seoul, is in close approximation from the North. This means that if we allow the North to take a preemptive strike, we would lose strategic center of gravity in the early phase of the war along with mass destruction, and get a fatal blow in our military capability in the early phase. In addition, we should take diplomatic measures such as alliances, nuclear umbrellas, nuclear diplomacy and active participation of other international actions to keep restraining the North and prevent North Korea's retention of WMD.
Military actions North Korea could possibly choose in the future are followed as: first, executing fullscale warfare in Korean Peninsula; second, carrying out local provocations near DMZ and NLL; third, taking military alleviating measures to lesson tensions in the Korean Peninsula; fourth, demonstrating military force through means such as additional nuclear tests and missile launches. The most probable of all possibilities is to carry out local provocations near the DMZ and NLL. The reason is that not only the relationship between the North and South has been tense but also the North could turn their attention on internal problems such as its yet unstable regime structure after the death of KimJungIl and food problems toward outside countries.
North Korea is attempting to firmly establish its status as a military superpower by actively deploying intercontinental ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads and by increasing mass production of nuclear weapons to achieve a "powerful and prosperous country" objective by 2012. And if succession of power to the next leader Kim Jung Eun does not go smooth in a stable form, there is a possibility of military adventures such as additional nuclear experiment and local provocation around the DMZ or the West Sea in order to build up Kim JungEun's achievements. Therefore, we should maintain thorough military preparation so that Kim JungIL would not be able to initiate any reckless military provocation on the Korean Peninsula.
Keywords: Songun military strategy, Songun politics, "Powerful and prosperous nation", militaryfirst ideology, strategic weapons, weapons of mass destruction, asymmetric combat capability, mass destruction strategy, allout surprise attack strategy, cyber strategy.
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