This post is from April 2010. Facts and links may have changed since. See more from that month

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Seoul Purpose

The DPRK has issued its own “nuclear posture review” — actually a “memorandum” titled something like “The Korean Peninsula and the Nuclear Issue” (English | Korean).

The Korean version is substantially longer and more detailed. It needs a decent translation, including the title.

I can’t decide whether I am pleasantly surprised or sort of disappointed, but the DPRK nuclear memo lacks much of the bluster that typically livens up any effort at reading North Korean propaganda. Indeed, the declaratory language is pretty modest stuff:

The mission of the nuclear armed forces of the DPRK is to deter and repulse aggression and attack on the country and the nation till the nuclear weapons are eliminated from the peninsula and the rest of the world. The DPRK has invariably maintained the policy not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states or threaten them with nukes as long as they do not join nuclear weapons states in invading or attacking it.

Interestingly, the DPRK seems to have modeled US declaratory policy more than, say, Chinese.

Jeffrey Lewis

Writing on ACW 2004–2026

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com. He is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. His also a non-resident affiliate at Stanford's Center for Security and International Cooperation and a Contributing Editor to Survival.

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