The belief that North Korea will not start a war

Lee Chul-jae

The author is head of the Institute for Military and Security Affairs and senior defense reporter at the JoongAng Ilbo.

After meeting government officials and researchers sympathetic to the ruling Democratic Party (DP), I discovered a shared belief: North Korea will not start a war.

Their optimism rests partly on the forces that Pyongyang has committed to Russia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Sunday that North Korea had decided to send another 30,000 to 50,000 troops. Ukraine has also stated that a North Korean missile unit with up to 120 ballistic missiles and six launchers is being deployed to Russia’s Voronezh region. South Korea’s Defense Intelligence Agency estimates that, as of July 2025, the North had shipped some 28,000 containers to Russia, equivalent to roughly 12 million 152-millimeter artillery shells.

The ruling party calculates that with 50,000 troops, 120 missiles and 12 million shells committed elsewhere, Pyongyang would find military action against Seoul difficult.

There is another basis for optimism. In December 2023, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un defined inter-Korean relations not as relations between compatriots but as “two hostile states.” The DP interprets this as an attempt to maintain the division through cold confrontation rather than seek peaceful coexistence.

Since April 2024, North Korea has been turning the armistice line into a de facto border, clearing vegetation around the military demarcation line, laying mines, erecting fences and building tactical roads. The ruling party sees these measures as intended to block South Korean culture from entering the North and prevent defections rather than prepare for attack.

It also hopes that once the Russia-Ukraine war ends, Seoul can enlist Moscow to improve relations with Pyongyang, reasoning that Russia will need economic cooperation with South Korea for postwar recovery.

I hope so. But will North Korea really follow this scenario? A full-scale war remains unlikely, but the grounds and conditions for armed provocations or localized conflict are accumulating.

North Korea’s war-fighting capabilities have strengthened. The prolonged Russia-Ukraine war and U.S.-China rivalry have helped Pyongyang escape strategic isolation, and cracks in sanctions have provided foreign currency. North Korean troops have learned 21st-century warfare in Ukraine. Advanced military technology, oil and food received from Russia have further strengthened its military.

Pyongyang could also become more belligerent. Kim has described the “two hostile states” as “two belligerent states” and made “territorial completion” a state objective. He has stressed “offensive defense,” calling for pre-emptive and overwhelming action when signs of provocation or hostile movements are detected. North Korean law explicitly allows pre-emptive nuclear use if an attack on the leadership or key state systems is judged imminent.

Turning the armistice line into a border could also hollow out the 1950-53 Korean War Armistice Agreement and give Pyongyang grounds to demand the dissolution of the United Nations Command. If the 2-kilometer-wide (1.2-mile-wide) northern half of the demilitarized zone disappears, opportunities to detect signs of a North Korean attack will diminish.

Nor is there any guarantee Russia will pressure North Korea simply because Moscow may want economic cooperation with Seoul after the war.

Another troubling sign is evidence that Kim has designated his daughter, Kim Ju-ae, as the fourth-generation successor to the Kim dynasty. Security on the Korean Peninsula has repeatedly shaken around North Korean successions.

Incidents that occurred in 1974, when Kim Jong-il was designated successor, include the sinking of a South Korean Coast Guard patrol boat, the assassination attempt on then-South Korean President Park Chung Hee that killed first lady Yuk Young-soo and the discovery of the first infiltration tunnel. In 2010, as Kim Jong-un consolidated his position as third-generation successor, North Korea attacked the South’s Cheonan warship and shelled Yeonpyeong Island.

Since Kim Il Sung’s claimed victory in the Battle of Pochonbo, military victory has been treated in North Korea as a qualification for supreme leadership. Kim Jong-un may also believe that nuclear weapons will make South Korea reluctant to retaliate decisively.

The DP’s optimistic forecast may prove exactly right. History, however, suggests that when it comes to security, pessimism has far more often proved the safer guide.