Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0267/02672.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 34KB | 546 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02672}
$Pretitle{281}
$Title{North Korea
Chapter 5B.   Armed Forces}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Stephan B. Wickman}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{north
military
korea
forces
korean
kim
south
soviet
armed
general}
$Date{1981}
$Log{Figure 29.*0267202.scf
}
Country:     North Korea
Book:        North Korea, A Country Study
Author:      Stephan B. Wickman
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1981

Chapter 5B.   Armed Forces

General Setting

     Before the modern era the use of military means to achieve political ends
was largely alien to Koreans. Belligerent behavior and militarism contradicted
the traditional value system, which was heavily imbued with Buddhist
nonviolence and Confucian scholasticism. Korean history does record some
military campaigns and excursions. Struggles between rival kingdoms for
domination of the peninsula occurred from time to time, and armed factions
contended over dynastic succession (see Origins of the Korean Nation, ch. 1).
These experiences did not provide Koreans with an enduring military tradition.
They did, however, produce a few notable figures, such as Admiral Yi Sun-sin,
who in the late sixteenth century was acclaimed for his efforts to repel
Japanese invaders with ironclad "turtleships," which outmaneuvered and
destroyed hundreds of enemy vessels. Yet the Yi Dynasty saw constant decline
of the military, which was officially disbanded in 1907, shortly before the
start of Japanese rule.

     During the latter part of the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, which
ended in 1945, numbers of Koreans served with Chinese communist forces in
Manchuria or under Soviet military tutelage in Siberia. From these came the
cadres of North Korean's post-1945 army, as well as the partisan tradition
that has since become official military legend.

     The first armed force in post-World War II North Korea consisted of
public security units activated in February 1946, under the guidance of
Soviet occupation authorities, to assume the tasks of domestic order and
security. The public security forces comprised both regular police and
paramilitary units, which could be likened to a constabulary. By the first
half of 1947 these forces were estimated to have totaled between 120,000
and 150,000 men, including two paramilitary divisions equipped with Soviet
materiel.

     Formation of a conventional military force appears to have begun
covertly from about the middle of 1946, only a few months after the
formation of the public security forces. Initial officer and noncommissioned
officer cadre personnel were reportedly drawn at least in part from Korean
personnel who served with the Chinese forces in Manchuria. Formal
establishment of the Korean People's Army (KPA) was announced by public
decree on February 8, 1948, seven months earlier than the formation of
the Democratic People's Republic of Korea itself.

     Through Soviet sponsorship during this formative stage of the KPA,
Kim Il Sung and his supporters secured a controlling position within the
military establishment. For the most part, this faction was made up of
officers who had spent the war years with Kim in the Soviet Union and had
returned to Korea with the Soviet occupation forces in 1945. The dominant
position within the armed forces that Kim and the coterie of officers
personally loyal to him were able to secure from the first proved crucial
in the subsequent political development of North Korea.

     By the time the Soviet forces had completed their withdrawal from the
North at the end of 1948, the KPA had a strength of some 60,000, not
including the border constabulary and railroad guards. From that time
until the beginning of the Korean War in June 1950-referred to by the
North Koreans as the Fatherland Liberation War-the KPA underwent a massive
buildup in manpower and Soviet materiel. Troop strength grew to between
150,000 and 200,000 men. Of these an estimated 40,000 were veterans of the
former Korean Volunteer Corps of the Chinese People's Liberation Army. As
many as 10,000 more were technicians and officers who had received training
in the Soviet Union.

     The impact of the war on North Korea was devastating. Many members of
the military elite were killed, including officers close to Kim Il Sung.
The extent of the devastation was indicated by the wartime comment of the
head of the United Nations (UN) Bomber Command in the Far East, that "there
are no more targets in Korea." P'yongyang's population fell from 400,000 to
80,000, that of entire North Korea from 9.6 million in 1949 to 8.5 million
in 1953. In all, about 500,000 North Korean troops were killed, and the level
of destruction left a bitter legacy of anti-American hatred.

     Hostilities were ended with the armistice agreement of July 1953, signed
by the commanders of the KPA, the UN Command, and the Chinese People's
Volunteers. The Republic of Korea (South Korea), however, did not sign the
armistice agreement, nor had any form of peace agreement been concluded as
of early 1981. Technically the peninsula remained in a state of war.

     From 1953 until 1958 military emphasis was placed on reorganizing and
rebuilding the infantry and on the acquisition of weapons and large numbers
of combat aircraft, and the country was dependent upon the military protection
of China and the Soviet Union. During the war China's People's Liberation Army
had saved Kim Il Sung's forces from almost certain defeat; and the Soviet
Union, while not introducing troops into the war, had supplied large amounts
of weapons and materiel (see Foreign Military Assistance, this ch.). Both
nations aided in postwar reconstruction, but as relations between China and
the Soviet Union soured, North Korea was forced into an uneasy balancing act
between allies. In October 1958 China completed its phased troop withdrawal.
The Soviet Union continued substantial economic assistance and provided a
military security screen behind which the North Koreans could concentrate
on reconstruction and economic development. The armed force that developed
during this period had a strong peasant base and was rooted in loyalty to
the KWP and to Kim Il Sung.

     In July 1961, less than two months after a military coup in South
Korea, North Korea concluded a treaty of friendship, cooperation, and
mutual assistance with the Soviet Union. The treaty was to be automatically
renewed periodically, unless one of the signatories objected one year in
advance of the date of termination. Within less than a week, North Korea
signed a similar treaty with China. Both documents asserted that if a
concerned party were to be invaded, the other party would "render military
and other assistance with every available means at its command."

     The remainder of the decade after the signing of the treaties witnessed
volatile swings in relations between North Korea and its two communist
neighbors. Both China and the Soviet Union had committed themselves to
support North Korea's defense; willingness to fully back its requests for
military aid, however, proved to be another matter. In that regard the
pattern of conflict on the peninsula during the late 1960s and 1970s
provides important background.

     In the late 1960s, in the context of Kim Il Sung's often and strongly
stated intention to "unify the divided fatherland" and to actively support
and encourage "the South Korean people in their revolutionary struggle,"
there began a trend toward active guerrilla operations in South Korea. The
1967 budget allocation for defense was estimated to have tripled. That year
and the next, substantial numbers of North Korean agents were captured or
killed in the South, and in 1969 more naval violations of the armistice
agreement occurred than at any previous time. In January 1968 North Korea
seized the U.S.S. Pueblo, imprisoned its crew, and dispatched a commando
suicide squad which reached downtown Seoul in an unsuccessful effort to
assassinate President Park Chung Hee. In November 1968, there wer