North Korea’s Big Bet

Some thoughts at the National Interest on how the decay of North Korea’s conventional military capabilities has boxed Pyongyang in…

Much has been made of the size of the Korean People’s Army, and of the looming threat that it (and particularly its artillery) pose to the most densely populated regions of South Korea. But a fixation on the enormous size of the KPA has served to obscure the reality of its increasing technological backwardness. At a time when South Korea and the United States are openly discussing the prospect of North Korean denuclearization, the abject obsolescence of North Korea’s conventional forces could prove an obstacle to any diplomatic breakthroughs.