The Threat Tactics Report: North Korea versus the United States (US) and the other similar products serve to describe the foreign nation’s most common combat division with an order of battle, its offensive and defensive doctrine as articulated in its manuals or recent military actions, and an analysis of how this actor would fight if facing the US in the future.
The Korean peninsula is a location of strategic interest for the US in the Pacific Command (PACOM), and many observers note that North Korea is an unpredictable and potentially volatile actor. According to the Department of Defense in its report to Congress and the intelligence community, the DPRK “remains one of the United States’ most critical security challenges for many reasons. These include North Korea’s willingness to undertake provocative and destabilizing behavior, including attacks on the Republic of Korea (ROK), its pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, and its willingness to proliferate weapons in contravention of United Nations Security Council Resolutions.”
Destructive malware used by unknown computer network exploitation (CNE) operators has been identified. This malware has the capability to overwrite a victim host’s master boot record (MBR) and all data files. The overwriting of the data files will make it extremely difficult and costly, if not impossible, to recover the data using standard forensic methods. Analysis of this malware is presented to provide the computer network defense (CND) community with indicators of this malware.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) remains one of the United States’ most critical security challenges in Northeast Asia. North Korea remains a security threat because of its willingness to undertake provocative and destabilizing behavior, including attacks on the Republic of Korea (ROK), its pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles, and its willingness to proliferate weapons in contravention of its international agreements and United Nations Security Council Resolutions. North Korean aspiration for reunification – attainable in its mind in part by expelling U.S. forces from the Peninsula – and its commitment to perpetuating the Kim family regime are largely unchanged since the nation’s founding in 1948, but its strategies to achieve these goals have evolved significantly. Under Kim Jong Il, DPRK strategy had been focused on internal security; coercive diplomacy to compel acceptance of its diplomatic, economic and security interests; development of strategic military capabilities to deter external attack; and challenging the ROK and the U.S.-ROK Alliance. We anticipate these strategic goals will be consistent under North Korea’s new leader, Kim Jong Un.
North Korea’s recent threat to carry out “special actions” against the South is rare and seems intended to signal the regime’s resolve to move forward with some form of provocation. The threat, however, is unlike past warnings the regime has typically issued prior to military provocations, suggesting that the North might follow through with a move other than a conventional military attack. Significantly, some aspects of the warning appear to signal Pyongyang’s commitment to follow up on the “actions” in the near future.
Pyongyang quickly has set the stage for the fourth Party Representatives Conference slated for 11 April. Though state media have not yet announced an agenda for the conference, it is likely that the regime will use the event to memorialize formally Kim Jong Il and appoint Kim Jong Un to a top party post. The tables below provide a baseline of state media coverage of the impending conference and its antecedents.
Personnel moves at the recent Party Conference and spring session of the legislature — beyond Kim Jong Un’s assumption of the top slots — underscore the new leadership’s continued commitment to revitalizing the Party as an institution and its confidence in managing the system. Though state media billed the moves merely as filling vacancies, the leadership quietly elevated or replaced almost one-third of the ruling Political Bureau, many through unannounced retirements or dismissals. The personnel changes occurred in military, internal security, and economic organizations and are not clustered in one area. Though personnel were added to the National Defense Commission (NDC), its relationship to the Political Bureau and Central Military Commission (CMC) remains unclear.
OSC has identified more than 350 joint ventures in North Korea in a search of open source information. For the 88 ventures for which we have investment amount data, the aggregate total of reported foreign investment from 2004 to 2011 amounted to $2.32 billion, with roughly half of that going toward ventures in the mining sector. Firms from China account for 75% of the joint venture partners for which partner country is known, followed by firms from South Korea, Japan, and Europe. Of the joint ventures for which we found location information, most show a Pyongyang address. The remaining are concentrated at seven locales in other parts of the country.
Congress has long been concerned about whether U.S. policy advances the national interest in reducing the role of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and missiles that could deliver them. Recipients of China’s technology reportedly include Pakistan and countries said by the State Department to have supported terrorism, such as Iran. This CRS Report, updated as warranted, discusses the security problem of China’s role in weapons proliferation and issues related to the U.S. policy response since the mid-1990s. China has taken some steps to mollify U.S. and other foreign concerns about its role in weapons proliferation. Nonetheless, supplies from China have aggravated trends that result in ambiguous technical aid, more indigenous capabilities, longer-range missiles, and secondary (retransferred) proliferation. According to unclassified intelligence reports submitted as required to Congress, China has been a “key supplier” of technology, particularly PRC entities providing nuclear and missile-related technology to Pakistan and missile-related technology to Iran.
In July and August 2010, Uriminjokkkiri, an official North Korean website allegedly operated by the United Front Department of the Workers Party of Korea, opened up accounts and began rehosting existing official North Korean propaganda material on three popular international online social media outlets: YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook. Despite the ROK Government’s blockage of South Koreans’ access to North Korea’s YouTube channel and Twitter page, the North continued to channel its messages and even made its first online interaction with a South Korean follower on Twitter. Facebook took down North Korea’s Facebook page on 23 August, after only a few days of operation, for violating terms of use.
Pyongyang during the past month has opened accounts with three popular online social media outlets that are not accessible inside North Korea. Content in these channels is taken directly from official propaganda, and Pyongyang is not currently using the sites for online discussion or exchange. The North’s use of social media appears designed to circumvent Seoul’s efforts to block access by South Koreans to North Korean online content. Pyongyang began its foray into global social media on 14 July with the launch of a YouTube channel. This was followed by the opening of accounts on Twitter (12 August) and Facebook (20 August). Average North Korean citizens do not have access to the Internet, so they almost certainly are not participating in these sites.
Daytime exterior shots in this series can be as old as August 2010. However, many of the photos are from the recent Arirang Mass Games in Pyongyang in October 2010. For background on the Arirang Mass Games, see the Guardian’s…
(U//FOUO) U.S. Air Force 21st Century Threat Guide, 2009.
Successive U.S. governments have urged the creation of an anti-missile system to protect against long-range ballistic missile threats from adversary states. The Bush Administration believed that North Korea and Iran represented strategic threats, and questioned whether they could be deterred by conventional means.
The structure of this chart is primarily taken from a reference pamphlet published by the South Korean Ministry of Unification in January 2009, which appears to be based on the DPRK constitution. As such, this chart is a representation of the formal relationships between the various entities and does not necessarily reflect the actual hierarchy and power relationships in the North Korean system. Other sources include: DPRK, ROK, PRC, and Japanese media; the ROK National Intelligence Service website; the Ministry of Unification’s Key Figures of North Korea 2009; and Japan’s Radiopress North Korea Directory 2008.