Ramping Up North Korea's Military Technology

"Keeping with the trend of modern warfare in which the competition for using intelligent drones as a major means of military power is being accelerated and the range of their use is steadily expanding in military activities [stressed by North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un]."

Korean Central News Agency report

 

"North Korea is realizing the need for not only nuclear weapons but also modernized capabilities in large-scale warfare, like AI and unmanned systems."

"There is a risk that these could become actual combat capabilities in a relatively short period of time."

Cha Du-hyeogn, former South Korean intelligence adviser

 

"North Korea is completely transforming itself by  upgrading its weapons systems for modern warfare based on its experiences in the war in Ukraine, and by copying military technologies from countries like China and Russia."

Yoo Yong-won, National Defence Committee, North Korea

South Korean TV shows footage of what appears to be an airborne early warning and control aircraft. Getty Images

"Suicide attack drones" powered by artificial intelligence, is now the latest military technology championed by North Korea. Inspired no doubt by the success realized by the Ukrainian military in its existential struggle against North Korea's much-admired Vladimir Putin toward whose bloodthirsty territorial expansion he has dispatched tens of thousands of North Korean soldiers as disposable fodder in the conflict, ostensibly to gain experience in battle-hardened situations.

 

Pyongyang is determined to  update weapons capabilities in lock-step with the front-line experience its soldiers are gaining with modern warfare technologies in Ukraine. Core reconnaissance and attack drones are for the moment Kim Jong Un's preoccupation, believing that development of unmanned control and AI capability to be priorities for North Korea's military.

 

International observers such as North Korea analyst Cha Du-hyeogn at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul states that the hermit kingdom's ambitions should be taken seriously. North Korea has revealed its development of a "new-type strategic reconnaissance drone" capable of tracking and monitoring various targets and troop activity on land and at sea. Photos of Kim inspecting a large reconnaissance drone on a runway and of drones crashing into ground targets were released by State media.

 

According to experts who have viewed the photos, the large drone in the photograph is similar to the U.S. RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance aircraft, a type of drone that North Korea introduced in 2023 at a weapons exhibition in Pyongyang. Additionally, North Korea showcased for the first time an airborne early-warning and control aircraft. One which would enable North Korea to manage air and ground operations in real time, simultaneously.

 

Images released from North Korean state media KCNA show what it said were self-detonating drone during a test of the unmanned aerial vehicles. Elements of this image were blurred before its release.

KCNA

Left unannounced was what AI technology is used in its new suicide attack drones, much less when North Korea plans to ramp up production. However, according to Cha Du-hyeogn, it is questionable whether these suggested new capabilities could be mass-produced any time soon, in his opinion. Suicide attack drones are typically small and easy to manoeuvre, so they can be undetected and produced in large quantities.

 

Further, there is no evidence as yet that North Korea has mastered such technologies, much less incorporated AI technologies which can detect air defence systems, he said dismissively. Despite which in recent months North Korea has been emphasizing its reconnaissance drone technology, a key component of Kim's military modernization strategy, where he has been pushing the mass-production of suicide drones. 

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been pictured inspecting new suicide drones, which state media say have been equipped with artificial intelligence (AI).  KCNA