For decades, discussions about North Korea’s military threat have centred almost exclusively on its nuclear weapons programme. This view, however, is increasingly inadequate for understanding the evolving security challenge that Pyongyang poses to Northeast Asia and beyond.
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Last month, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un signalled a fundamental shift in military strategy. Moving beyond his regime’s traditional emphasis on nuclear deterrence, Kim said the country would significantly upgrade its conventional armed forces alongside its atomic arsenal.
A formal policy of “simultaneously pushing forward the building of nuclear forces and conventional armed forces in the field of building up national defence” would be unveiled at the coming Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party, according to North Korean state media reports.
North Korean military policy has been shifting away from an exclusive reliance on nuclear deterrence towards a comprehensive modernisation of its conventional weapons systems, innovation in defence production processes and integration of cutting-edge technologies, including unmanned systems and artificial intelligence.
The strategy shift became especially clear after North Korea sent troops to fight alongside Russia against Ukraine, with Kim likely realising the limitations of depending solely on nuclear weapons to win an actual war. As the Ukraine conflict shows, what matters in winning a war has much more to do with conventional military capabilities.
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This presents a critical new variable in the security situation across the Korean peninsula and wider region: a nuclear-armed North Korea pursuing ambitious conventional military upgrades, likely with Russian assistance.