World Conflicts Monitor
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North Korea vs South Korea
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North Korea vs South Korea
ActiveNorth Korea and South Korea have been divided since the end of WWII, with North Korea being a communist dictatorship and South Korea being a democracy. The two countries have clashed for decades, with North Korea recently taking alarming steps that suggest they may be planning for war. North Korea has changed its constitution to officially label South Korea as the enemy, while also rapidly advancing its nuclear and missile capabilities with help from Russia. Experts believe North Korea's leader is positioning the country to potentially launch an attack on South Korea, significantly raising the risk of a catastrophic new conflict on the Korean Peninsula.
Key Events
Constitution Altered
North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un formally calls for an alteration to the North Korean constitution to remove all of Pyongyang's commitments to a peaceful reunification and label South Korea as the nation's 'primary foe and invariable principal enemy'.
Arch of Reunification Destroyed
Kim Jong-un orders the destruction of the Arch of Reunification, a monument in Pyongyang symbolizing the goal of eventual peaceful Korean reunification.
Russia-North Korea Military Cooperation
The Russian defense minister personally visits Pyongyang, and Kim Jong-un travels to the Russian Far East to meet with Putin, marking a new era of military cooperation between the two countries.
North Korean Troops in Russia
Reports emerge of significant numbers of North Korean military personnel already within Russia, with estimates of 10,000 North Korean soldiers present and undergoing training for potential deployment to the front lines in Ukraine.
MIRV Missile Test
North Korea tests a missile featuring Multiple Independently Targeted Re-entry Vehicles (MIRV) technology, which allows a single missile to carry several nuclear warheads that can independently target different sites, making them significantly harder to intercept.
Full Analysis
Throughout 2024, North Korea has been taking a series of aggressive actions that have raised global concerns about the potential for a major military conflict on the Korean Peninsula. At the start of the year, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un formally ordered changes to the country's constitution to eliminate any references to the goal of peaceful reunification with South Korea. Instead, the constitution was altered to officially label South Korea as North Korea's 'primary foe and invariable principal enemy.'
To further symbolize this shift, Kim then ordered the destruction of the 'Arch of Reunification,' a monument in Pyongyang that had represented the countries' shared aspiration for eventually reuniting. These radical legal and political changes were seen by experts as evidence that Kim has already made the strategic decision to go to war with South Korea, just as his grandfather did when he launched the devastating Korean War in 1950.
Compounding these concerns, North Korea has been aggressively advancing its nuclear weapons and missile capabilities, conducting record numbers of ballistic missile tests. In 2023, it is estimated that North Korea's nuclear arsenal may have grown to between 80-90 warheads, with the goal of eventually reaching 100-300 warheads. This buildup has been enabled by a new strategic alignment between North Korea and Russia, with the two countries forging unprecedented military cooperation since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
North Korea has provided Russia with massive quantities of artillery munitions to aid its war effort, and in exchange, it has gained access to advanced Russian missile and satellite technology that has significantly boosted its own weapons programs. Worryingly, North Korea has also begun deploying thousands of its own troops to train with the Russian military, potentially setting the stage for North Korean forces to be directly involved in the Ukraine conflict.
Analysts believe that if a war were to break out between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, North Korea would see this as an opportune moment to launch its own attack on South Korea, with the hopes of quickly conquering the South before the U.S. could fully respond. The threat of North Korea's growing nuclear arsenal, combined with its deepening ties to Russia, have dramatically raised the stakes and the risks of miscalculation on the Korean Peninsula. Many experts now believe that another war between the two Koreas is a real and alarming possibility in the coming years if the current trajectory continues.