Korean People's Army

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Korean People's Army
DPRK Official Goals
Reunification of the Korean Penisula under DPRK Leadership DPRK Regime Survival Protection of Kim Jong-Il
Military manpower
Military age (males)	17 years of age (2004)
Availability (males)	17-49: 5,851,801 (2005 est.)
Fit for military service (males)	17-49: 4,810,831 (2005 est.)
Reaching military age annually (males)	194,605 (2005 est.)
Active troops	1,102,600 (Ranked 4th)
Total troops	5,995,000 (Ranked 4th)
Military expenditures
Dollar figure	$5.2174 billion (FY02)
Percent of GDP	22.9% (2003 est.)

Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl:	조선인민군
Hanja:	朝鮮人民軍
McCune-Reischauer:	Chosŏn inmin'gun
Revised Romanization:	Joseon inmin-gun

Korean People's Army refers to the armed personnel of the military of North Korea. Kim Jong-il is the Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and Chairman of the National Defense Commission. The army has four branches: Ground Force, Naval Force, Air Force and the Civil Securities Force. Its official foundation day is 8 February 1948. According to the US State Department, North Korea has the fourth-largest military in the world, at an estimated 1.21 million armed personel, with about 20% of men ages 17-54 in the regular armed forces.^[1] It also has a reserve force comprising 4,700,000 troops.

1 History
2 The KPA today
3 Equipment
4 Armour
5 Armoured Fighting Vehicles
6 Artillery
7 Military branches
8 See also
9 References
10 External links

[edit] History

The Korean People's Army was formed from a cadre of guerrillas and former Korean soldiers in the service of the Soviet Union and Mao's Chinese Eighth Route Army who had gained battle experience in fighting Japanese and later Nationalist Chinese troops. One of the guerrilla leaders was Kim Il-sung, who commandeered a group of 300 Korean irregular troops operating in Manchuria.

After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Kim constructed a large Korean People's army skilled in infiltration tactics and guerrilla warfare as well as standard Soviet infantry tactics. Before the outbreak of the Korean War, Joseph Stalin equipped the KPA with modern heavy tanks, trucks, artillery, and small arms (at the time, the South Korean Army had nothing remotely comparable either in numbers of troops or equipment). The KPA was the primary instigator of the Korean War (called the "Fatherland Liberation War" in the North).

During the opening phases of the Korean War in 1950, the KPA quickly drove South Korean forces south and captured Seoul, only to lose 70,000 of their 100,000-strong army in the autumn after U.S. amphibious landings at the Battle of Inchon and a subsequent drive to the Yalu River. The KPA subsequently played a secondary role to Chinese forces in the remainder of the conflict. By the time of the Armistice in 1953, the KPA had 290,000 casualties and 90,000 POWs. There were also a large number of civilian deaths in the northern part of Korea, but no accurate figures are available.

In 1953, the Military Armistice Commission (MAC) was created to oversee and enforce the terms of the armistice. The Neutral Nation Supervisory Committee (NNSC), originally made up of delegations from Poland and Czechoslovakia on the North Korean-Chinese People's Volunteers side, and Sweden and Switzerland on the United Nations side, monitored the activities of the MAC.

[edit] The KPA today

The North has an estimated 1.21 million armed personnel, compared to about 686,000 South Korean troops, plus 32,500 US troops in South Korea.^[2] Military spending is estimated at 20%-25% of GNP, which puts the DPRK's military spending at the highest proportion of GNP in the world. Roughly 20% of North Korean men between the ages of 17 and 54 serve in the regular armed forces. As a result, DPRK forces are thought to have a substantial numerical advantage over the South (as high as 3 to 1) in several key categories of offensive weapons like tanks, long-range artillery, and armoured personnel carriers. However, despite this numerical superiority, much of North Korea's land arsenal consists of aging Soviet equipment, compared with the South's more modern weapons systems. The army remains largely an infantry force with 3500 tanks, mostly old-model Soviet tanks^[3]. South Korea is also engaged in a military alliance with the United States for protection, with several units of the United States armed forces stationed in South Korea.

The North has perhaps the world's second-largest special operations force (55,000), designated the Special-Purpose Corps, designed for insertion behind enemy lines in wartime. While the North has a relatively large fleet of submarines (especially small submarines for infiltrating South Korean waters), they are primarily older Russian models such as Golf and Romeo class vessels. Its air force has twice the number of aircraft as the South, but except for a few advanced fighters (40 MiG-29s) the North's air force is obsolete. The North, like the South, deploys the bulk of its forces well forward, within 100 miles of the Korean DMZ, to include 700,000 troops, 8,000 artillery systems, and 2,000 tanks. Several North Korean military tunnels under the DMZ were discovered in the 1970's, including the famous Third Tunnel of Aggression.

North Korea is technically still at war with South Korea. In recent years, North Korea has sought to dismantle the MAC in a push for a new peace mechanism on the peninsula. In April 1994, it declared the MAC void and withdrew its representatives. Prior to this, it had effectively ended the functions of the NNSC.

Over the last several years, the North has allegedly moved more of its rear-echelon troops to hardened bunkers near the DMZ. Given the proximity of Seoul to the DMZ (some 25 miles or 40 km), South Korean and United States forces are likely to have little warning of any attack. The United States and South Korea continue to state that the U.S. troop presence remains an effective deterrent.