[Global NK 논평] The 'Strategic Deterrence' of North Korea and the Self-Deterrence of South Korea and the United States

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Summary and Introduction

North Korea’s nuclear strategy can be considered an application of the Russian concept of ‘strategic deterrence.’ The current two pillars of North Korea’s nuclear strategy are the 2022 Law on Nuclear Force and the adversarial two-state doctrine formalized in 2023. These two are inseparably linked, and when integrated, they reveal a strategic design by North Korea to seize control of the Korean Peninsula’s security situation and become its master through preemptive nuclear attack and the theory of nuclear war initiation. This strategic design is based on North Korea’s nuclear strategy reaching its highest position in decades. In response to this, South Korea and the United States are pursuing a policy of avoiding conflict and crisis with North Korea. This demonstrates that South Korea and the United States are responding with self-deterrence by internalizing North Korea’s increased capabilities and threats.

North Korea’s Nuclear Strategy Victory Theory: Winning Without Fighting Through Threats

North Korea’s nuclear strategy can be summarized in three stages. First, North Korea vividly and realistically exaggerates the level of its nuclear capabilities and its willingness to actually use them. Second, it uses this to psychologically and cognitively influence the decision-making of the opposing leadership. Third, it compels the opposing leadership to be cautious in its actions towards North Korea, act as North Korea wishes, or accept North Korea’s demands.

North Korea’s nuclear strategy is not a policy aimed at actually initiating a nuclear war, but rather a policy that uses the threat of initiating nuclear war through preemptive nuclear use as a means of coercion. If North Korea were to actually decide to initiate nuclear war through preemptive nuclear use, it would ultimately mean North Korea choosing self-destruction. Therefore, this is not a rational decision for North Korea. However, if the opponent perceives North Korea’s capabilities and intentions regarding the provocation of nuclear war through preemptive nuclear weapon use as bluster, North Korea’s nuclear strategy collapses. To prevent the collapse of its nuclear strategy, North Korea must further exaggerate its nuclear capabilities and its willingness to actually use them in a more vivid and realistic manner. However, if North Korea overstates its willingness to engage in nuclear war through preemptive nuclear use and overacts in order to politically subdue the opponent, tensions will rise and crises may occur due to the proportional or excessive counter-response from the opponent. In such a situation, due to miscalculation by one or both sides, an accidental nuclear war could break out, regardless of the actual intentions of North Korea or the opponent. North Korea’s most effective threat to its opponent is to make the opponent 'clearly' aware that North Korea's level of risk tolerance in the competition to accept nuclear war risks is much higher than that of the opponent. That is, North Korea seeks to gain superiority in the competition to accept nuclear war risks and in controlling escalation, thereby politically subjugating the opponent and inducing the opponent to accept favorable terms of agreement with North Korea. Since it would be an absolute loss in a competition over the performance and quantity of nuclear weapons and delivery systems, North Korea seeks victory by changing the framework of conflict to a competition to accept the risk of (accidental) nuclear war outbreak.

In short, North Korea’s nuclear strategy is to use its increased nuclear capabilities as leverage to achieve victory without fighting. In other words, North Korea’s nuclear strategy aims to instill fear in the opponent’s leadership and/or populace regarding the risk of nuclear war that could arise from conflict with North Korea or that North Korea could initiate, thereby internalizing that fear. This internalized fear compels the opponent’s leadership and/or populace to act cautiously, anticipating North Korea’s intentions, mood, and attitude, to avoid conflict with North Korea, abandon resistance to North Korea’s threats, and ultimately increase their willingness to voluntarily and preemptively accept North Korea’s demands.

North Korean Application of the Russian Concept of 'Strategic Deterrence'

The concept of 'strategic deterrence' was established in Russia around 2014-15. North Korea’s public statements do not mention this concept, and there is no evidence that North Korea is utilizing it in its strategic planning. Nevertheless, the reason for introducing this concept into the analysis of North Korea’s nuclear strategy is that it makes understanding and analyzing North Korea’s nuclear strategy much easier when examining the policy discourse that supports it.

Strategic deterrence is defined in the Military Encyclopedia published by the Russian Ministry of Defense as: “A coordinated system of military and (including political, diplomatic, legal, economic, ideological, scientific-technical, and other) non-military measures. These measures are taken sequentially or simultaneously... with the aim of deterring military actions that cause damage to the state’s character... Strategic deterrence aims to stabilize the military-political situation. Its purpose is to influence the opposing enemy within predetermined limits or for escalation-de-escalation of military conflict... The targets of strategic deterrence can be the military-political leadership and the population of a potential enemy (or union of states)... The means of strategic deterrence are continuously employed during peacetime and wartime.”[1]

There are four objectives of strategic deterrence.[2]First, to dissuade aggression or coercive pressure. Second, to prevent the creation of threats. Third, to manage escalation if conflict begins. Fourth, to ensure conflict is resolved on favorable terms. Strategic deterrence is achieved through cross-domain pressure, the core of which consists of three elements.[3]First, the core pillar is nuclear capability. A robust nuclear capability provides wider scope for the effective utilization of other means. Second, conventional capabilities are important, especially precision strike, long-range missile systems, and air/missile defense. Third, non-conventional/non-military tools, including cyber warfare, information warfare, diplomatic/ideological means, and economic leverage. In this regard, it is particularly important to manipulate/control the perceptions of the opposing side’s camp in a manner favorable to one’s own side. Strategic deterrence must blend these three elements to influence the perceptions of the opposing leadership regarding costs, risks, and escalation, thereby constraining the opposing side’s thinking and actions. The benefits of strategic deterrence are as follows:[4]First, by including non-nuclear and non-military means, it reduces reliance on nuclear weapons. Second, it aims to constrain the opponent’s actions or compel desired actions through coercion rather than destruction. Third, it reflects a consistent and integrated logic of coercion across multiple domains—nuclear, non-nuclear, and non-military—at a national level. On the other hand, strategic deterrence can destabilize the security situation.[5]First, strategic deterrence justifies offensive coercion as defense. Second, it disregards how the opposing enemy perceives one’s own actions. Third, it blurs the distinction between wartime and peacetime by necessitating a series of highly active coercive actions even during peacetime. Fourth, it ignores the possibility of unintended escalation by treating all actions of the enemy as intentional.

Combining the Russian theory of strategic deterrence with North Korea’s aforementioned nuclear strategy victory theory, and expressing its content concisely through academic concepts, North Korea seeks victory achieved through mere threats, without fighting, by inducing self-deterrence in the opponent through maximizing their psychological fear via strategic deterrence centered on the threat of nuclear war initiated by preemptive nuclear attack. This is the core political substance of North Korea's recently announced position on its nuclear strategy. Specifically, it is the core strategic objective embedded in the theory of leading nuclear war through preemptive nuclear use, as presented in North Korea's 2022 "On the DPRK's Nuclear Force Policy," and the threat of annihilating and annexing South Korea with nuclear weapons, as implied in the so-called 'adversarial two-state doctrine' formalized in late 2023. These two are political propaganda materials carefully crafted to influence the opponent’s perception of the situation and their level of fear.

Integrating the logic of the Nuclear Force Law and the adversarial two-state doctrine, North Korea would initiate nuclear war through preemptive nuclear attack if it judges that a threat to its leadership or regime is imminent, and would then annihilate and annex South Korea with nuclear weapons. This narrative serves to achieve North Korea’s strategic deterrence objectives in two ways. First, the determination of whether a 'threat is imminent' is entirely at North Korea's arbitrary discretion. North Korea is creating room to arbitrarily judge even routine joint exercises between South Korea and the U.S., or periodic or ad-hoc deployments of strategic assets, as 'imminent threats.' North Korea can arbitrarily judge certain movements of ROK-U.S. joint forces as 'imminent threats' according to its needs, announce this, and declare readiness for preemptive nuclear attack and nuclear war posture. Through this, North Korea will likely seek to curtail the military activities of the ROK-U.S. joint forces around the Korean Peninsula.

Second, North Korea will likely seek to exploit and utilize the latent fear of nuclear war among South Korea’s political leadership and/or populace, whether consciously or unconsciously, to create a favorable situation for achieving its strategic goals. North Korea will particularly continue to repeatedly create crisis situations related to preemptive nuclear attack and nuclear war outbreaks according to its convenience. In this process, it will seek to increasingly imprint the fear of nuclear war outbreak and the devastation of nuclear destruction on the situational awareness of policymakers and the general public, ultimately influencing policy decisions. In such a scenario, South Korean policies and public opinion will be compelled to yield to North Korea’s threats, accept negotiations under structurally favorable conditions for North Korea, and freeze hostilities (at the current level of conflict without escalating further). In this case, North Korea can achieve victory without war or accumulate small victories. This signifies that North Korea will henceforth take the lead in determining and controlling the stability or instability of security on the Korean Peninsula.

North Korea's Current Strategic Position and Future Strategic Design

According to the U.S. DIA report in 2025, North Korea has reached its most advantageous position in decades.[6] This is against the backdrop of an international political environment characterized by North Korea’s increased nuclear/missile capabilities and strengthened North Korea-Russia cooperation. The 2022 Nuclear Force Law and the 2023 adversarial two-state doctrine are strategic documents reflecting North Korea’s advantageous position. As hinted above, these two strategic elements are inseparably linked. It is necessary to recall what these two strategic elements foreshadow for North Korea’s future strategic orientation. First, North Korea’s security is currently guaranteed by its own nuclear forces. North Korea has no need to seek security assurances from the United States or any other country. The 2022 North Korean Nuclear Force Law is evidence of North Korea having reached this position. Second, given the expectation that the U.S.-China conflict and the confrontation between the (pro-U.S.) Western bloc and the anti-U.S. authoritarian bloc will persist for some time, any improvement in U.S.-North Korea relations based on a (provisional) resolution of the North Korean nuclear issue, which requires stable de-escalation of tensions between the major powers in Northeast Asia, progress in inter-Korean exchanges and cooperation, or the establishment of a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula (regardless of its content), is impossible. Therefore, North Korea no longer pursues a strategic course aimed at achieving these goals. Third, considering the first and second conditions, North Korea’s options are either to forcefully assert its recognition as a nuclear state by the West, including the United States, or to maintain a relationship of perpetual hostile conflict. Fourth, in the global solidarity of anti-U.S. authoritarian states, North Korea has emerged as the third major state after China and Russia. This is symbolically demonstrated by Kim Jong Un’s ability to stand alongside Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin at the military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of China's victory in the war on September 3, 2025. As it is, North Korea is a strategic asset to China and Russia.

The future strategic vision of North Korea, combining the four conditions above, is the 'adversarial two-state' doctrine. North Korea is engaged in an arms race with South Korea, Japan, and the United States seeking to offset or overwhelm North Korea’s capabilities. This arms race is absolutely disadvantageous for North Korea, given its weaker national strength. However, to the extent that North Korea alleviates the burden on China and Russia in Northeast Asia and supports Russia’s efforts in the war against Ukraine, it receives military, economic, and political support from China and Russia. North Korea must continuously maintain a level of capability and performance that allows it to be treated as an asset by China and Russia. To achieve this, North Korea must ensure that the capabilities and interests of South Korea, Japan, and the United States in Northeast Asia are dispersed and weakened through North Korea, via military buildup and adventurous foreign policy. The adversarial two-state doctrine internally justifies the reasons why North Korea must perpetually engage in military buildup, maintain a perpetual quasi-wartime system, endure economic hardship, and be politically controlled. Furthermore, the adversarial two-state doctrine completely rejects the South Korean-style denuclearization-exchange-cooperation promotion paradigm for inter-Korean relations and declares and enforces the North Korean-style 'two states in a state of belligerence' paradigm as the paradigm for inter-Korean relations. Together with the Nuclear Force Law, the adversarial two-state doctrine provides the means to control the ROK-U.S. combined forces through the threat of preemptive nuclear attack and nuclear war outbreak, and to overwhelm South Korea’s overall national strength in one fell swoop. The Nuclear Force Law and the adversarial two-state doctrine enable North Korea to rise to the same level as China and Russia and open a channel for direct dealings with the United States, excluding South Korea from discussions on Korean Peninsula security issues.

Conclusion: Self-Deterrence of South Korea and the United States

The current ROK-U.S. policy towards North Korea reflects North Korea’s rising strategic position and strategic orientation. This signifies a shift in the internal perception framework of the United States and South Korea from the past framework of adhering to the principle of denuclearization and accepting conflict/crisis and imposing punishment if necessary, to a new framework focused on avoiding conflict and crisis through appeasing North Korea. In the first Trump administration, the issue of preventing North Korea’s nuclear attack on the U.S., and the formation of a new relationship with North Korea as a de facto nuclear state, emerged as important considerations within the U.S. perception framework towards North Korea. Particularly during the second Trump administration, President Trump appears to have set the de facto objective of ROK-U.S. policy as crisis avoidance with North Korea based on appeasement. The current South Korean government is pursuing improved inter-Korean relations and the resumption of exchanges and cooperation through avoiding conflict and crisis with North Korea as its policy objective. Based on the argument that 'any peace, however costly, is better than war,' South Korea has set avoiding conflict and maintaining peace between the two Koreas as its highest objective, while also emphasizing the resumption of reconciliation and cooperation if possible. Denuclearization is positioned as a subsequent step to exchanges and cooperation (and normalization of relations). South Korea’s and the U.S.’s approach to North Korea is partially accepting what North Korea has long demanded. This implies that North Korea’s nuclear coercion is penetrating the perception structures of the United States and South Korea, partially altering the basic framework of policy decisions. This can be referred to as the self-deterrence of South Korea and the United States towards North Korea. ■

[1] Kristin Ven Bruusgaard, "Russian Strategic Deterrence and European Security" Survival, Global Politics and Strategy, Volume 58, 2016 - Issue 4, p. 10-11에서 재인용.

[2] Samuel Charap, "Strategic Sderzhivanie: Understanding Contemporary Russian Approaches to ‘Deterrence’" (Security Insights No. 62, George C. Marshall Center, 2020), p. 5.

[3] Bruusgaard, "Russian Strategic Deterrence and European Security," pp. 11-15.

[4] Charap, "Strategic Sderzhivanie,“ pp. 5-6.

[5] Charap, "Strategic Sderzhivanie,“ p. 6.

[6] Defense Intelligence Agency, 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment, p. 20.

■ Park Hyung-joongIndependent North Korea Researcher.

■ Edited and Managed by: Lee Sang-jun_EAI 연구원

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