North Korea is a country of paradoxes and contradictions. Although it remains an economic basket case that cannot feed and clothe its own people, it nevertheless possesses one of the world's largest armed forces. Whether measured in terms of the total number of personnel in uniform, numbers of special operations soldiers, the size of its submarine fleet, quantity of ballistic missiles in its arsenal, or its substantial weapons of mass destruction programs, Pyongyang is a major military power. North Korea's latest act to demonstrate its might was the seismic event on October 9, 2006. The authors of this monograph set out to assess the capabilities and discern the intentions of North Korea's People's Army.

North Korea is a country of paradoxes and contradictions. Although it remains an economic basket case that cannot feed and clothe its own people, it nevertheless possesses one of the world's largest armed forces. Whether measured in terms of the total number of personnel in uniform, numbers of special operations soldiers, the size of its submarine fleet, quantity of ballistic missiles in its arsenal, or its substantial weapons of mass destruction programs, Pyongyang is a major military power. Content: North Korea's Military Threat Conventional Forces Unconventional Forces Overall Conclusions The North Korean Ballistic Missile Program DPRK National Strategy and Motivations Historical Background of DPRK Missile Development Institutional Setting Conclusion U.S. Government Policy Toward North Korea Countering the North Korean Threat (New Steps in U.S. Policy) Pressuring North Korea (Evaluating Options) President Donald Trump on Current Crisis on the Korean Peninsula A Message to the Congress of the United States on the Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to North Korea Continuation of the National Emergency with Respect to North Korea Statement from the President on North Korea's Second ICBM Launch Statement by President Donald J. Trump on North Korea About the Authors

This monograph will examine the armed forces of the DPRK, both conventional and unconventional. The official North Korean name of all branches of North Korea's armed forces is the Chosen Inking or KPA. This monograph will address the following topics: the political context of the military in the DPRK; the origins and evolution of the armed forces; and the KPA's command and control structure and its WMD and conventional components, including doctrines. Pyongyang's capabilities and intentions also will be assessed.

North Korea has presented one of the most vexing and persistent problems in U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War period. The United States has never had formal diplomatic relations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the official name for North Korea), although contact at a lower level has ebbed and flowed over the years. Negotiations over North Korea's nuclear weapons program have occupied the past three U.S. administrations, even as some analysts anticipated a collapse of the isolated authoritarian regime. North Korea has been the recipient of over $1 billion in U.S. aid (though none since 2009) and the target of dozens of U.S. sanctions.

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These excellent reports are reproduced in this book: North Korea's Military Threat: Pyongyang's Conventional Forces, Weapons Of Mass Destruction, and Ballistic Missiles; Welcome Iran and North Korea to the Nuclear Club: You're Targeted; Whither Unified Korea? East, West or Center? North Korea's Military Threat: Pyongyang's Conventional Forces, Weapons Of Mass Destruction, and Ballistic Missiles - North Korea is a country of paradoxes and contradictions. Although it remains an economic basket case that cannot feed and clothe its own people, it nevertheless possesses one of the world's largest armed forces. Whether measured in terms of the total number of personnel in uniform, numbers of special operations soldiers, the size of its submarine fleet, quantity of ballistic missiles in its arsenal, or its substantial weapons of mass destruction programs, Pyongyang is a major military power. North Korea's latest act to demonstrate its might was the seismic event on October 9, 2006. In addition to sizeable conventional forces, North Korea has significant WMD and ballistic missile programs. Nuclear weapons almost certainly were on Kim Il Sung's mind from 1945 onward. He was impressed by the power of the bombs used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, both in terms of their destructive capacity and their value as a political weapon. The DPRK's quest for a nuclear program began in the 1950s. Pyongyang has multiple reasons for keeping the program and no obvious good or compelling reasons to give it up. Welcome Iran and North Korea to the Nuclear Club: You're Targeted - In one of the great ironies of the post-Cold War era, the United States, the most powerful nuclear state in the world, seems fear stricken by the possibility of Iran and North Korea obtaining nuclear weapons. Two facts frame the dilemma: both states are intent on becoming nuclear powers, and neither the European Union (EU) nor China is willing to help curb their ambitions. Clearly, nonproliferation is an important policy goal, but the United States should not view leakage as a catastrophe. Rather, the proper response is a declaratory policy of nuclear deterrence directed specifically at Iran and North Korea once they become nuclear powers. As scholars and practitioners long have affirmed, the essence of nuclear deterrence is the certitude that an attack with nuclear weapons will result in a retaliatory strike of assured destruction. The idea is to make the consequences so severe that the nuclear option is never contemplated. U.S. nuclear credibility rests on both the capability and the national will to retaliate with nuclear weapons. Whither Unified Korea? East, West or Center? Since the end of the Korean War, the balance of power in Northeast Asia has been significantly shaped by an enduring Republic of Korea (ROK)-US alliance. Despite the constant threat of a resumption of hostilities between the two Koreas, the current structure maintains a status quo that assures the balance of power in Northeast Asia. However, if hostilities or a collapse of the Democratic Republic of North Korea (DPRK) lead to a unified Korea; its choice of alignment could disrupt the balance of power imposed on the region since 1953. A unified Korea's profound and strategic decision of alignment will not come easy and will not be black or white. It will however have the potential to shift the regional balance of power-a decision influenced by Korean history, culture, nationalism and the interests of the regional stakeholders. A unified Korea has three broadly defined alignment options-tilt West towards the United States and Japan, tilt East towards the People's Republic of China (PRC), or pursue neutrality/nonalignment, each with their own advantages, disadvantages, and nuanced variations.

The Korean Peninsula was and is in a state of flux.More than 60 years after the war that left the country divided, the policies and unpredictability of the North Korean regime, in conjunction with the U.S. alliance with South Korea and the involvement of China in the area, leave the situation there one of the most capricious on the globe. Confronting Security Challenges on the Korean Peninsula presents the opinions from experts on the subject matter from the policy, military, and academic communities. Drawn from talks at a conference in September 2010 at Marine Corps University, the papers explore the enduring security challenges, the state of existing political and military relationships, the economic implications of unification, and the human rights concerns within North and South Korea. They also reiterate the importance for the broader East Asia region of peaceful resolution of the Korean issues.

North Korea's leaders have sought to dominate the Korean Peninsula since then failure to conquer the Republic of Korea (ROK) in tine Korean War. However, they have lacked the economic, political, and conventional military means to achieve that dominance, having instead come to rely on their nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs, Today, North Korea's nuclear weapons pose an existential threat to the ROK, and they might soon pose a serious threat to the United States; even a few of them could cause millions of fatalities and serious casualties if detonated on ROK or U.S. cities. The major ROK and U.S. strategy to moderate this threat has been negotiating with North Korea to achieve denuclearization, but this effort has failed and seems likely to continue tailing. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, despite committing to denuclearization, has continued his nuclear weapon buildup. The authors of this Perspective argue that there is a growing gap between North Korea's nuclear weapon threat and ROK and U.S. capabilities to defeat it. Because these capabilities will take years to develop, the allies must turn their attention to where the threat could be in the mid to late 2020s and identify strategies to counter it. Doing this will help establish a firm deterrent against North Korean nuclear weapon use. The authors conclude that North Korea will be most deterred if it knows that any nuclear weapon use will be disastrous for the regime-that these weapons are a liability, not an asset. Book jacket.