This study aims to describe the military strategy with an emphasis on the basis of military thoughts of Kim Il-sung. He has steadily developed nearly all the strategy-tactics of North Korea ever since he came to power.
With the founding of the countr...
This study aims to describe the military strategy with an emphasis on the basis of military thoughts of Kim Il-sung. He has steadily developed nearly all the strategy-tactics of North Korea ever since he came to power.
With the founding of the country, he has intensively introduced Marxist-Leninist military thoughts and their doctrines into his country. Naturally, he was, to a great extent, influenced by the teachings of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Tse-tung.
He learned the dialectical materialism from Marx and Engels, the "Inevitability of War" from Lenin, the theory of "Protection of the Country" from Stalin, and from Mao Tse-tung, the military thought in which "politics without war becomes insignificant." These teachings have in common revolution and violence in military thoughts.
The main Marxist thoughts are characterized by the doctrine that "the capitalist society is to perish due to its internal contradictin." Mao Tse-tung attempted to hold political superiority in revolution although he insisted that "politics is born from the barrel and politics is a war without shedding blood and war, a politics shedding blood." Stalin stub-bornly supported the doctrine of National Liberation War" as part of world communist revolutionary strategy.
The above-mentioned military ideas are construed as the conflict inevitably resulting from the division of capitalist and proletarian societies.
As a revolutionary communist, Kim Il-sung has closely clung to these marxist military thoughts and doctrines which have served as the essential factors to the construction of military strategy of the northern part of Korea.
Strongly influenced by such military thoughts, Kim Il-sung thoroughly applied them to the newly liberated northern half of the Korean Peninsula under the banner of communism. On the other hand, he began to remould them in accordance with the particular situation of the country, thus creating for the first time "Churche in thought" in the mid-1950s. This means that man should play a central role and uphold an independent and creative position in the revolutionary process. It is just from position that Kim Il-sung created his "Self-Defense" doctrine which finally resulted in "Four Principal Military Lines", called in other terms offensive strategy-tactics; (1) "Militarization of the whole people"; (2) "Fortification of the entire country"; (3) Tranformation of soldiers into cadres";and (4) "Modernization of military equipment".
In sum, the military-tactics to which Il-Sung has contributed can be characterized as follows:
First is the combination of "modern and irregular warfare". The role of the latter is to support a modern war conducted by regular forces so as to win a decisive victory.
Second is the combination of modern warfare and partisan tactics. This places emphas is on the latter for a final victory although modernized weapons system plays an essential role in modern warfare.
Third is the "mixed strategy-tactics" over which political thought prevails in modern warfare led by regular forces. This s Kim Il-sung's particular military strategic idea.
Fourth is the strategy of "quick war and quick decision" aiming at dispersing and annhilating the enemy. For this purpose, Kim Il-sung has pursued the goal of "totally modernized force", improving the mobility of the regular forces.
Fifth is the concept of "surprise attack" designed to hit the enemy first, grasping its absentmindedness and its exposed targets.
Last is the combination of "mountain and nocturnal warfares" designed to be suited to the peculiar conditions of the Korean Peninsular.
In conclusion, the military strategy-tactics are based on the class war concept aiming at destroying the Capitalist World. The 6.25 Korean War waged by Kim Il-sung as part of Stalin's world revolutionary strategy represents it. Therefore, the military strategy-tactics of Korea aims principally to destroy the democracy of the Republic of Korea.