북한 비대칭전의 기원과 형성 = Origins and Formation of North Korea's Asymmetric Warfare|RISS 상세보기

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation examines why North Korea has persistently selected and reproduced asymmetric warfare rather than engaging in direct competition, despite the pronounced military and economic disparity between the two Koreas. Existing studies have explained North Korea's asymmetric strategy primarily in terms of the conventional military gap, economic constraints, regime survival, and the need for external deterrence. These material explanations provide important insights into why North Korea seeks cost-effective means of compensating for its relative weakness. They do not, however, fully explain why instruments operating in different domains - including nuclear weapons and missiles, localized military actions, cyber operations, and unmanned aerial vehicles - have been repeatedly selected over an extended period and incorporated into a broader pattern of strategic behavior. This study therefore interprets North Korea's asymmetric warfare not as an automatic response to material inferiority but as a long-term strategic choice shaped by the interaction of historical trauma and collective memory, the politics of internal cohesion, and the institutionalization of strategic culture.
The study proposes an analytical framework composed of four interconnected elements: collective trauma, asabiyya, strategic culture, and the selection of asymmetric strategy. These elements constitute an interpretive chain of mediation rather than a deterministic causal sequence. The principal hypothesis is that North Korea's selection of asymmetric strategy cannot be fully explained by threat perception or material inferiority alone, but is mediated and structured by historical trauma, collective memory, asabiyya, and strategic culture. Three subordinate hypotheses specify this argument: collective trauma reinforces asabiyya; asabiyya is institutionalized as strategic culture; and strategic culture orients strategic choices toward asymmetric means.
The research combines documentary analysis, historical analysis, and comparative analysis. It draws on North Korean official sources, including Rodong Sinmun, the Korean Central News Agency, the writings and speeches of North Korean leaders, party documents, laws, and official statements, while also examining Korean and international academic research, government documents, and policy reports. The temporal scope extends from the beginning of Japanese colonial rule in 1910 to 2026. T?rkiye, Israel, Iran, and Pakistan are examined as theoretical comparative cases. These cases are not employed as controlled tests designed to establish the universal validity of the framework. Rather, they are used to explore its comparative applicability and scope conditions and to identify the historical and institutional features specific to North Korea.
The findings suggest that North Korea's strategic culture developed through Japanese colonial rule and the anti-Japanese armed struggle, the Korean War and postwar reconstruction, socialist state-building, and the institutionalization of the self-reliant defense line. Memories of colonial domination and war were reconstructed as narratives of national humiliation, existential threat, and persistent external hostility. Through the mythologization of the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle, popular cohesion was reorganized around loyalty to the leader and the regime, the ethics of sacrifice and mobilization, and collective resistance to external threats. This study conceptualizes this form of authoritarian political cohesion as asabiyya.
Asabiyya was subsequently institutionalized as a strategic culture that interprets the external environment as inherently hostile and legitimizes aggressive self-defense as a necessary mode of survival. Within this strategic culture, asymmetric strategy emerged not as an exceptional response but as a repeatedly preferred pattern of action. Rather than competing directly in areas dominated by stronger adversaries, North Korea has sought to exploit their vulnerabilities and magnify military, psychological, and political effects through the selective use of limited resources.
The three empirical cases examined in this dissertation display patterns broadly consistent with the analytical framework. Nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles represent strategic-level asymmetry. For North Korea, nuclear capabilities function not only as weapons of mass destruction but also as an ultimate deterrent against regime destruction, symbols of national autonomy and leadership achievement, and political leverage for restructuring its asymmetric relationship with major powers.
The 2010 shelling of Yeonpyeong Island represents tactical asymmetry combined with psychological warfare. Although conventional weapons were employed, North Korea attempted to magnify the psychological and political effects of a limited military action by exploiting uncertainty concerning its intentions, responsibility, and willingness to escalate. Memories of war and conflict in the West Sea, regime-protection discourse during the leadership succession, and the reproduction of victory narratives contributed to the legitimation of this limited use of force.
Cyber operations and unmanned aerial vehicle operations represent the expansion of North Korea's asymmetric strategy into low-visibility and technology-based domains. Cyber operations exploit non-physicality, attribution difficulties, and deniability to conduct intelligence collection, financial acquisition, sanctions evasion, and social disruption. Unmanned aerial vehicles exploit low visibility, remote operation, and relatively low cost for reconnaissance, infiltration, and potential strike missions. Although the two instruments differ in their operational characteristics, both exploit the technological dependence, openness, and high defensive costs of stronger adversaries. Cyber operations and drone incursions operate as gray-zone instruments, while nuclear forces shape the strategic deterrence environment within which lower-level actions are conducted and interpreted.
The three cases do not result from an identical causal mechanism operating automatically across different domains. Each has its own historical background, organizational structure, technological requirements, and decision-making process. Nevertheless, common patterns are evident. Memories of past threats provide a framework for interpreting present security conditions; narratives of regime protection and internal cohesion legitimize strategic action; and the exploitation of adversarial vulnerabilities is repeatedly presented as an appropriate means of ensuring survival. North Korea's asymmetric warfare can therefore be understood not as a simple collection of weapons and provocations but as an expression of strategic preferences conditioned by historical memory, political cohesion, and strategic culture.
The comparative cases indicate that the framework may have limited applicability across different national contexts while also highlighting the distinctive features of North Korea. In T?rkiye, Israel, Iran, and Pakistan, historical trauma, national identity, and perceptions of external threat have also influenced strategic culture and the selection of asymmetric means. The mechanisms through which these elements interact, however, vary according to political institutions, leadership structures, alliance relations, military organizations, defense-industrial capacities, and the degree to which historical memory is institutionalized.
In North Korea, memories of colonial rule and the Korean War have been combined with the continuation of national division and the armistice system, hereditary leader-centered rule, the mythologization of the anti-Japanese revolutionary tradition, and prolonged international isolation. This combination has produced a particularly closed and self-reinforcing relationship among historical memory, regime legitimacy, and military strategy. The comparative analysis therefore suggests that North Korea cannot be reduced to a universal model of asymmetric behavior, even though aspects of the analytical framework may be relevant to other cases.
The theoretical contribution of this study lies in explaining how material conditions are interpreted through historical memory, internal cohesion, and strategic culture and then translated into particular strategic preferences. It also treats strategic culture not as a fixed national attribute or a retrospective description of behavior but as a dynamic mediating structure that is historically formed, institutionally reproduced, and capable of conditioning strategic choice. In addition, the study extends the concept of asabiyya beyond kinship-based and tribal communities by employing it to analyze how memories of collective suffering are transformed into leader-centered loyalty, sacrifice, and organized mobilization in a modern authoritarian state.
This study is limited by the restricted accessibility of North Korean decision-making processes and military organizations. It relies substantially on official discourse and external assessments, particularly in its analysis of cyber operations. The proposed relationships among trauma, asabiyya, strategic culture, and asymmetric strategy should therefore be understood as an interpretively reconstructed causal pathway rather than as a conclusively verified causal model. The comparative cases are theoretically selected and do not constitute a systematic controlled comparison capable of supporting broad generalization.
Despite these limitations, this dissertation contributes to the study of North Korean military behavior by interpreting asymmetric warfare as a long-term strategic choice formed and reproduced through the institutionalization of historical memory, political cohesion, and strategic culture. North Korea's asymmetric warfare cannot be understood solely as the improvised choice of a weaker actor. It is better understood as the military expression of how the regime remembers its past, defines its adversaries, maintains internal cohesion, and organizes its survival.

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국문 초록 (Abstract)

본 논문은 남북한 사이에 뚜렷한 군사적·경제적 격차가 존재함에도 북한이 직접적인 경쟁 대신 비대칭전을 지속적으로 선택하고 재생산하는 근원적 동인을 규명하는 데 목적이 있다. 기존 연구는 북한의 비대칭전략을 주로 군사력 격차와 경제적 제약, 체제 생존 논리로 설명해 왔다. 이러한 물질적 설명은 북한이 군사적 열세를 보완하기 위해 비대칭적 수단을 선택하는 이유를 밝히는 데 일정한 설명력을 지닌다. 그러나 핵과 미사일, 국지적 군사행동, 사이버공격, 무인기 운용과 같이 성격과 작동 영역이 서로 다른 수단이 장기간 반복적으로 선택되고 하나의 전략적 행태로 결합하는 과정을 충분히 설명하기는 어렵다. 이에 본 연구는 북한의 비대칭전을 물질적 열세에 대한 단순한 반응이 아니라, 역사적 트라우마와 집단기억, 내부 응집의 정치, 전략문화의 제도화가 결합하여 형성된 장기적 전략 선택으로 재해석한다.
본 연구는 집단적 트라우마, 아사비야（asabiyya）, 전략문화, 비대칭전략 선택이라는 네 요소가 상호 연동된 해석적 매개 연쇄로 작동한다는 분석틀을 제시한다. 주가설은 북한의 비대칭전략 선택이 위협 인식이나 물질적 열세만으로는 충분히 설명되지 않으며, 역사적 트라우마와 집단기억, 아사비야, 전략문화에 의해 매개되고 구조화된다는 것이다. 이를 구체화하기 위해 트라우마가 아사비야를 강화하고, 아사비야가 전략문화로 제도화되며, 전략문화가 비대칭전략 선택을 방향 짓는다는 세 가지 하위가설을 설정하였다. 연구방법으로는 문서분석, 역사적 분석, 비교분석을 결합하였으며, 시간적 범위는 식민통치기부터 2026년까지이다. 튀르키예, 이스라엘, 이란, 파키스탄을 이론적 비교사례로 검토하여 분석틀의 비교 적용 가능성과 범위조건을 탐색하고 북한 사례의 고유성을 밝히고자 하였다.
분석 결과, 북한의 전략문화는 일제 식민지배와 항일무장투쟁, 한국전쟁과 전후 재건, 사회주의 체제 건설과 자위노선의 제도화 과정에서 형성된 것으로 나타났다. 식민지배와 전쟁의 기억은 민족적 굴욕과 생존 위협의 서사로 재구성되었으며, 항일유격대 경험의 신화화를 매개로 대중적 결속은 수령과 체제에 대한 충성, 희생과 동원의 윤리를 중심으로 한 정치적 응집으로 재조직되었다. 본 연구는 이러한 권위주의적 응집을 아사비야로 개념화하였다. 아사비야는 다시 외부 세계를 적대적 공간으로 인식하고 공격적 자기방어를 생존의 정당한 형식으로 규범화하는 전략문화로 제도화되었다. 이러한 전략문화 속에서 비대칭전략은 예외적인 선택이 아니라 반복적으로 선호되는 행동 양식으로 자리 잡았다.
제4장부터 제6장까지의 사례에서는 본 연구의 분석틀과 정합적인 공통 패턴이 관찰되었다. 핵무력과 대륙간탄도미사일은 존재론적 위기의식에 기반한 전략적 수준의 비대칭성이자 강대국과의 관계를 재구성하는 정치적 지렛대로 기능하였다. 2010년 연평도 포격은 제한적인 무력사용을 통해 군사적 효과를 넘어 심리적·정치적 파급을 확대하려 한 전술적 비대칭성과 심리전의 결합으로 분석되었다. 사이버공격은 비물리성과 행위자 귀속의 어려움, 부인 가능성을 활용하여 상대의 방어체계와 제재 구조를 우회하는 수단으로 운용되었다. 무인기 운용은 저가시성·원격성·저비용성을 활용한 정찰과 침투, 잠재적 타격 수단으로 나타났다. 세 사례는 수단과 작동 방식에서는 차이를 보이지만, 과거의 위협 기억이 현재의 안보 문제를 해석하는 틀로 작동하고, 내부 응집과 체제 수호의 담론이 이를 정당화하며, 상대의 취약성을 공략하는 전략적 선택으로 이어진다는 공통점을 보였다.
비교사례에 대한 검토는 본 연구의 분석틀이 상이한 국가적 맥락에도 제한적으로 적용될 가능성을 보여주는 동시에 북한 사례의 고유성을 드러냈다. 튀르키예, 이스라엘, 이란, 파키스탄에서도 역사적 트라우마와 국가 정체성, 외부 위협 인식이 전략문화와 비대칭적 수단 선택에 영향을 미치는 양상이 관찰되었다. 그러나 북한에서는 이러한 과정이 수령 중심의 세습체제, 항일혁명전통의 신화화, 한국전쟁의 공식 기억정치, 분단과 정전체제의 지속, 장기적인 국제 고립과 결합하면서 특히 폐쇄적이고 자기강화적인 형태로 나타났다.
이론적으로 본 연구는 북한의 비대칭전략을 물질적 열세와 문화적 요인 가운데 하나로 환원하지 않고, 물질적 조건이 역사적 기억과 내부 응집, 전략문화를 통해 해석되고 특정한 전략적 선호로 전환되는 과정을 설명하였다. 또한 아사비야 개념을 혈연과 부족 공동체의 결속에 한정하지 않고, 현대 권위주의 국가에서 집단적 고통의 기억이 지도자 충성과 희생, 조직적 동원으로 전환되는 과정을 분석하는 매개 개념으로 확장하였다. 결론적으로 북한의 비대칭전은 약자의 즉흥적인 선택만으로 설명되지 않는다. 그것은 북한 체제가 과거를 기억하고 외부의 적을 규정하며 내부 결속과 생존을 조직하는 방식이 군사전략의 형태로 발현된 결과로 이해할 수 있다.

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본 논문은 남북한 사이에 뚜렷한 군사적·경제적 격차가 존재함에도 북한이 직접적인 경쟁 대신 비대칭전을 지속적으로 선택하고 재생산하는 근원적 동인을 규명하는 데 목적이 있다. 기존 ...

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