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Useful Notes: North Koreans with Nodongs
Must be out of ammunition again.

From triumph to triumph!
O Leadership of the Revolution!
Thousands of lives become guns and shells,
Ready to defend you!
North Korean patriotic song, "We Will Safeguard the Leadership of the Revolution with Desperate Courage!"

The Korean People's Army was formed from Kim Il-sung's Korean guerrillas allied with the Soviet Union (and led by the latter) in 1932. By the time of Korea's liberation from the Japanese in 1945, the guerrilla force had been transformed into a well-equipped army, to the point of enabling them to invade South Korea in 1950. Although they were beaten back by a United Nations force spearheaded by none other than Yanks with Tanks, the KPA eventually recovered due to intervention by the Chinese with Chopper Supportnote  and, to a lesser degree, the Reds with Rockets.


North Korea also developed its own weapons industry, starting with the Nodong missile (the Trope Namer), and eventually nuclear weapons, cheating the United Nations inspectors in their "peaceful" quest for nuclear energy. Ironically, they've started their nuclear program in earnest since US, hoping the regime to crumble after Kim Il-Sung's death and wishing to push them a little, in turn cheated Northerners out of the already agreed genuinely peaceful nuclear energy deal in late Nineties. Unfortunately, this only reaffirmed Koreans' belief that Westerners cannot be trusted.



Korean People's Ground Forces:




Korean People's Navy



Korean People's Air Force

Like the KPA and KPN, the KPAF does not lack in quantity but has serious issues with quality. The majority of their 1700 aircraft are Cold War era relics, which only roughly 400 more modern fighters acquired from Russia and China. They even have a number of biplane transports that they favor because they can be operated from short, improvised landing strips and are notoriously hard to detect on radar. KPAF military doctrine is mostly based off the old Soviet air doctrine, as well as their experiences with American heavy bombing during the Korean War. As a result, the KPAF is mostly concerned with air defence, mostly consisting of fighters and interceptors. This is complemented by the worlds densist air defence network, with some 12,000 Anti-Aircraft Guns, up to 1000 heavy SAM's, and some 17,000 Man Portable Air Defence systems.

North Korean Nukes



North Korea has two missiles that could potentially be used as ICBMs, the Nodong (a fitting name, all things considered) and improved versions of Taepodong rockets. However, the reliability of these rockets is much debated (the Unha orbital launcher, which failed spectacularly each time it launched,note  is almost universally considered to be a barely-modified Taepodong-2). To be honest, thought, failures are pretty normal during testing of the new rockets, and it's not that the North has had many opportunities to test them, given the international pressure. So the rocket launches ended up in the same "bargaining chip threats" bin as the nuclear tests.


North Korean military in fiction:

  • In general, North Korea tends to get used as a placeholder for the Chinese, typically when the story's already been written and the marketing boys have to come in and point out that China is a really big market and the product's gonna be sold there too, so find somebody else. Whenever you see a modern/near-future North Korea that's a credible military threat, it's a safe bet that they're China with the serial numbers filed off.

  • Plenty of movies from South Korea deal with the North Korean military.
    • Tae-guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War is a 2004 film and is the biggest budget film ever made about The Korean War. It centers on a pair of brothers who are drafted into the South Korean military and shipped off to fight on the frontlines from 1950 - 1953.
  • North Korea is featured in the James Bond film Die Another Day.
  • Red Dawn (2012) remake involves this plot. And you thought China invading the US was implausible.
  • World War III Breaks Out, a supposedly lost Japanese flick, features an alternate history where North Korea sparks an Apocalypse How by causing a nuclear war between America and themselves.
  • The Cold Open of G.I. Joe: Retaliation features the Joes smuggling a defector out of North Korea.
  • The second Behind Enemy Lines film centers around the real-life Ryanggang explosion in Sept. 2004 and attributes it to U.S. Navy SEAL Team One sabotaging a nuclear missile there.

  • Red Phoenix by Larry Bond.
  • The online novel Proud Legions by John F. Antal, with a plot not all that dissimilar from that of Red Phoenix.

Live-Action TV
  • Naturally, they show up every so often in Mash.

Video Games
Heh heh...No Dongs. Now they have some Type o' Dong.
New Spanish ArmadaForces with FirepowerThe Other Chinese Army
Nepali With Nasty KnivesUseful NotesPakistanis with Panters

alternative title(s): North Koreans With Nodongs
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