Class,
Good Afternoon, I hope all is well and that you’re enjoying your Thanksgiving week. After reading this weeks assigned material, I assessed the North Korean Intelligence community as capable within their surrounding region, but marginally capable at an international level. The reason I have assessed them as marginally capable is because they lack the technical capabilities of reaching beyond their region. It was plain to see that their primary focus was on South Korea, Japan and the United States Military Installations. According to Pike, “North Korean intelligence and security services collect political, military, economic, and technical information through open-source, human intelligence, and signals intelligence capabilities (Pike
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The North Korean’s have an extremely well trained Special Operations Forces (SOF). They are the largest Special Operations Force in the world. Currently, the North Korean SOF numbers more than 100.000 soldiers, approximately 10 percent of their active duty military. These Special Operations Forces are utilized as HUMINT operators. They are inserted into South Korea via amphibious or air insertion. An example of this would be the following. “In September 1996, North Korean Special Operations Forces {SOF) infiltrated the South Korean eastern coast near the town of Kangnung. The North Koreans, numbering 26, abandoned their stranded submarine and rushed from beach into the surrounding hills. What followed was a two-month bloody manhunt for the infiltrators that left all but two of the North Koreans dead. During the manhunt, 16 South Korean soldiers and civilians died and 27 were wounded.” (Dies 2004). This mission was considered just typical mission that went wrong. I assess the their HUMINT capability as highly capable because they have at least 100,000 specially trained operators that have the ability operate in South Korea to gain intelligence on South Korea and United States Military
In the late 1940’s the United States became involved in the United Nations action to stop the spread of communism against North Korea. For many months the U.N. force had been beaten back by a persistent NKPA force. The tactic chosen by the North Korean’s was to conduct a swift frontal assault with a rapid follow-on assault from both the left and right flanks. This proved extremely effective and caused the loss of Seoul and had forced the U.N. forces to fall back to the very tip of the Korean peninsula. Here the U.N. force, commanded by General Walton H. Walker, and the Eighth Army could fall back no further without retreating off the Korean peninsula altogether. General Walker formed his remaining troops into what would be known as the Pusan Perimeter.1 Still unfazed, the North Korean army battered the lines of the Eighth Army and many casualties resulted. It was clear that although the force could remain here indefinitely with naval support many U.S. troops would be lost and no new ground would be gained. For six weeks the North Korean Army conducted attacks trying to breach the line and it wa...
Salter, Christopher L., and Charles F. Gritzner. "Introducing North Korea,." North Korea. 2nd ed. New York: Chelsea House, 2007. . Print.
The Foundation of a Modern Economy: Korean Land Reform and the Miracle on the Han
Throughout the early 1950’s the Korean Peninsula was a location with much civil unrest and violence. For this reason, it is a miracle that the Korean Armistice Agreement was actually mutually agreed upon by North and South Korea. Even with the constant complications, and early opposition surrounding the Korean Armistice Agreement, the aid of Dwight D Eisenhower made this unrealistic attempt of peace a reality.
The numerically superior North Korean Army caught the South Korean army of 38,000 and the American off guard. The North Koreans captured the South Korean capital of Seoul within a few days and were driving south. The United Nations voted to send military forces there to help out and the United States started to mobilize its forces. The 24th Infantry Division was the closest force, which happened to be in Japan. They quickly organized an undermanned and under equipped Regimental Combat Team that they would fly to Korea to help stop the North Korean hordes from making their way south while the rest of the 24th I.D. would ship the remainder to the division’s equipment and men to Pusan to help fight the North
The Korean War was a tragic event that started on July 25, 1950 and ended with a truce on July 27, 1953. America had feared the Soviet Union would bring communism to other countries especially in Asia. Korea had split after World War II. The Soviet Union had backed the government in the north and America backed the government in the south. They both agreed that the 38th parallel would split North from South Korea. However, o July 25, 1950, North Korean troops passed through the 38th parallel and captured Seoul. This would forever be known as the First Battle of Seoul. The United Nations responded by creating a resolution that labels the attack a “breach of the peace.” The United State decided to intervene in Korea just because they couldn’t
方玥雯[Fang Yue Wen] (2009). 北韓核武研發與東北亞安全：2002-2007. [The North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons and the Security in Northeast Asia: 2002-2007] in台灣[Taiwan]: 國立政治大學[National Cheungchi University] Retrieved 18 July, 2013 from http://nccuir.lib.nccu.edu.tw/handle/140.119/37029
Explanation: Like what it is said. North Korea can and will be a threat, and we need to keep a close watch on them before it is too late. Everybody needs to be ready. Kim Jong Un looks like an innocent man but behind closed doors, that is where he is most dangerous. He can be planning and preparing an attack that nobody even know.
Since the end of the Korean War, the United States has enacted policies to isolate and undermine the Kim Dynasty in North Korea. A key development took place in the past several decades where North Korea broke away from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to develop their own nuclear weapons and while lacking launch capabilities, they have been successful in their development. During this process, the United States took active policies to deter the North Koreans in pursuit of their goals. It is easy to assume that the United States took this stance in order to maintain a military edge in the region. But under closer examination, this neo-realist perspective does not explain why the United States pursued this policy. In reality, North Korea to this day does not pose a significant military threat, even with limited nuclear capabilities. A constructivist perspective is more able to explain US policy in this instance because it does not focus on sheer militaristic power. It takes into consideration the state's identities which drives their interests. The identities of the US and North Korea and the interactions between them drove both nations to the point of acquiring and deterring nuclear use.
Since its origin in 1948, North Korea has been isolated and heavily armed, with hostile relations with South Korea and Western countries. It has developed a capability to produce short- and medium-range missiles, chemical weapons, and possibly biological and nuclear weapons. In December 2002, Pyongyang lifted the freeze on its plutonium-based nuclear weapons program and expelled IAEA inspectors who had been monitoring the freeze under the Agreed Framework of October 1994. As the Bush administration was arguing its case at the United Nations for disarming Iraq, the world has been hit with alarming news of a more menacing threat: North Korea has an advanced nuclear weapons program that, U.S. officials believe, has already produced one or two nuclear bombs. As the most recent standoff with North Korea over nuclear missile-testing approaches the decompression point, the United States needs to own up to a central truth: The region of Northeast Asia will never be fully secure until the communist dictatorship of North Korea passes from the scene. After threatening to test a new, long-range missile, Pyongyang says it is willing to negotiate with "the hostile nations" opposing it. But whether the North will actually forgo its test launch is anyone's guess. North Korea first became embroiled with nuclear politics during the Korean War. Although nuclear weapons were never used in Korea, American political leaders and military commanders threatened to use nuclear weapons to end the Korean War on terms favorable to the United States. In 1958, the United States deployed nuclear weapons to South Korea for the first time, and the weapons remained there until President George Bush ordered their withdrawal in 1991. North Korean government stateme...
On June 25th, 1950 at 4 a.m. the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) attacked across the 38th parallel, implementing a well-developed invasion plan (Lewis p.1). The KPA had a huge number of military men compare to the South Koreans. It had about 135,000 soldiers in 10 divisions, five separate infantry brigades, and one armor brigade with 120 soviet-made-T-34 tanks (Lewis p.1). The Republic of Korea (ROK) was taken by surprise and was not fully equipped with weapons like the KPA (Lewis p.1). So for that matter the ROK could not halt the invasion. But if the South Koreans would have had heavy artillery like the KPA then maybe the KPA’s invasion plan would had been a failure. The United Nations Security Council approved a US sponsored resolution that called fo...
Throughout the global media North Korea’s isolation and Harsh rule has become increasingly secretive, although some facts have been detected (“North Korea Profile”, 1). According to data collected from The Guardian, eighty-one out of one-hundred people in South Korea have access to the internet, yet in North Korea around .1 out of one-hundred people have access to the internet . Not only is the greater population of North Korea disconnected from outside sources, yet leaders in North Korea are also isolated from outside sources; putting themselves at a disadvantage. North Korea may launch a war, but they are unaware as to what they are up against because of its secrecy . Around one million are serving in the North Korean Army, but when South Korea’s army; combined with the U.S’s army (their ally), the ratio of the North Korean Army is signi...
The Korean War explicitly portrayed the atrocious battle between both the North and South side which gave the United Nations its military role for the first time, thus expanding the war from a domestic to an international scale. Sometimes called “The Forgotten War”, the Korean War was mainly overshadowed in historical terms by the conflicts that occurred before and after it, World War II and the Vietnam War. The Korean War had raged for years without a true resolution and after years of battles, even the compromise that was made was not a complete one. The current situation regarding North and South Korea is quite volatile. In order to apprehend the Korean War, one has to look at events that took place before the war, how the war was conducted and the aftermath of the War.
Kim, Yongho and Yi, Yurim “Security Dilemmas and Signaling during the North Korean Nuclear Standoff”, Asian Perspective, Vol. 29, No. 3, 2005, pp. 73-97
It is a well-known fact that the dropping of the two atomic bombs near the end of World War II in 1945 ushered in the dawn of the Atomic Age. For the first time in human history, the world was introduced to the awesome power of nuclear weapons. Since that time, there have been several different nuclear threats to the world, and one of those threats can be found along the Pacific Rim, in the country of North Korea. Like the dropping of the atomic bombs, it is also known that the North Korean government has admitted to possessing nuclear weapons, and in doing so, it stands as a silent, potential nuclear danger to the rest of the world. To understand this situation more fully, one must be given some background, starting in the early 1950s.