[특집] 북한 군사력의 해부:위협의 정도와 수준

An Analysis of North Korean Military Capabilities:Assessment on the Degree and Level of the Threat by Measuring the Balance of Military Capabilities between South and North Korea

The fall of communism and collapse of the cold war regime in the international arena, it seems, cannot keep North Korea from concentrating all her efforts building the legitimacy of Kim Jung-il' s political succession by maintaining and strengthening the monolithic ideological thought of Kim Il-sung. Despite of the strained national economy having created more difficulties for regime's preservation, North Korea has been domestically indulged herself into building the cult of personality for Kim Jung-il since the death of Kim Il-sung last year: needs for the demonstration of his abilities as a “general” and “Highest Commander-In-Chief of the North Korean Peoples Armed Forces(NKPA) seems to have made the Border Guards be under the direct control of defense ministry. NKP A now is consisted of more than one million personnel in active service: armed with more than 3,800 tanks, 10,000 artillery pieces, 850 combat aircrafts and 460 various naval combatants: which has been continuously reinforced by the deployment of newly built tanks, amphibious combat vehicles, APCs, hovercrafts, long range artillery pieces at the front, the introduction of newly tested ballastic missiles and forward redeployment of combat aircrafts; all of which will eventually enhance the NKP A' s capabilities for surprise attack. Since an assessment of balance between two rivals' military capabilities is perhaps more important in judging the probability of a war than any other factor because national capabilities (including military capabilities) are relatively more static or constant than national intension (including political intension) when you presume war is functional outcome of both variables, national capabilities and intension, this paper will mainly focus on quantified comparison of forces' capabilities to provide general outline on the degree and level of North Korean military threat to South. And if the dictum, “war is an extension or a tool of politics”, is an acceptable hypothesis, some what reversed hypothesis “military capabilities will set the boundary of political intension” is perhaps acceptable one since national capabilities will often decisively work in setting the political goals and means. If so, then, the correct analysis and assessment of military balance between two Koreas can provide significant symptoms for the boundaries of North Korea's political intension in near future. It is goes without saying that even the fundamental problems inherited in he quantified analysis of military capabilities using such method as AD E (Armor Division Equivalent) Scoring, which this paper applies, is remained unsolvable.: however. this is the only available method that, in a current warfare, quality factor of weapons system and intangible factors of military capabilities such as C3I, which appear to be very important at the contemporary war such as Gulf War, can be counted. In case of ground forces' capabilities, NKP A is armed partly with some obsolete weapons system of PRC and Soviet Union and in large part with self produced weapons system of relatively high quality. The total AD E scores of NKP A' s ground forces is about 1.4~1.8 times of those of ground forces of Republic of Korea Armed Forces (ROKA). More significant is that the force structure of NKPA's ground forces is formed to exercise its combat fighting capability more effectively than ROKA' s ground forces: Of its total AD E scores, 65.7 % are composed with major attack weapons system which is consisted of fire powers and maneuver capabilities at the ratio of two to one. In comparisons with this, of total AD E scores of the ROKA's ground forces, 60% are composed with major attack weapons system and 40% with foot soldiers, 5% higher than that of NKP A's. In addition, NKP A already reorganized its Spear Head Units for infiltration and break-through operations into formidable numbers of brigades.