During the NATO Summit held in Wales on 4 to 5 September 2004, participants awarded a new nomenclature of “hybrid warfare” to the Russian incursion into the East Ukraine and Creme Peninsula. Studies related to hybrid warfare, the modern origin of ...
During the NATO Summit held in Wales on 4 to 5 September 2004, participants awarded a new nomenclature of “hybrid warfare” to the Russian incursion into the East Ukraine and Creme Peninsula. Studies related to hybrid warfare, the modern origin of which could be traced back to Chechen War, Iraq War, Afghanistan War, and the Second Lebanon War, have been relatively new. Since the time immemorial, there has been no shortage of terms such as, inter alia, complex war, irregular war, guerilla war, asymmetrical war, the forth generation war, that have come into vogue as means of describing the type of war that was strange or unfamiliar. This paper will pose the following research questions. What were success factors for Russian version of hybrid warfare against Ukraine? In consideration of the fact that North Korea is sure to keep a close eye to the developments in Ukraine`s denuclearization process, Color Revolutions, Arab Spring, Lybian uprising, and the illegal annexation of Creme peninsula, are there any possibilities that it might be tempted to repeat the success story of Russian hybrid warfare? If so, what threatening aspects of it we need to bear in mind and be guarded against? In search for exploring possible solutions to the above questions, this paper will be composed of five sections. Followed by the introduction section, the second section will attempt to review a variety of definitions and conceptualizations with regard to the hybrid warfare, and the third section will be focused on analyzing the relations between hybrid warfare and several aforementioned similar terms. The fourth section would be mainly about the `Gerasimov Doctrine` which is known to be the precursor of hybrid warfare, and characteristic aspects of Russian version of hybrid warfare in action on the ground. The final section will be devoted to, in lieu of summary and conclusion, in-depth analysis on possible North Korea`s options available to proceed with hybrid warfare against the South following the footstep of erstwhile communist mentor in Eurasia. This paper is far from meant to be laying out comprehensive scenarios that North Korea could envision in its persistent and unrelenting quest for the ultimate communization of Peninsula. Instead it desires to ring an urgent wake-up call to the danger of hybrid warfare for Korean government and the military, lest they be caught off-guard at this critical juncture in inter-Korean relations.