Party Control of the North Korean Military at the Battalion Level

By Robert Collins, HRNK Senior Advisor

Edited by Greg Scarlatoiu, HRNK President and CEO

 

Human rights denial in the North Korean military is even more dominantly applied than it is in the North Korean society in general. In so doing, the Kim regime employs dominating techniques to control every soldier – officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted – to the maximum extent possible. The concept of human rights is never considered or implemented to the most extreme degree.

Consequently, it is critical to understand how the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) and the General Political Bureau exercise control over Korean People’s Army’s (KPA) command.  The most revealing assessment of North Korea’s control over command is demonstrated at the KPA’s battalion level. Every battalion in the 1.2 million KPA, regardless of its combat specialty or role in wartime or peace, is politically controlled from inside the ranks of the battalion itself. 

The main components of control over command at the battalion level are parallel authorities of the unit commander and the unit political officer, daily surveillance of every member of the battalion, and consistent loyalty testing, recording and ideological enforcement.  

The parallel authority dynamic establishes overlapping authority that is at times both competitive and counterproductive. The unit commander is responsible for training, operations and logistics while the unit political officer is responsible for ideological control, loyalty assessments, and surveillance of officers and troops. At times, these priorities may conflict, depending on internal and external dynamics. The two are both responsible for the health, well-being, and discipline of the unit’s troops. As the two have different reporting chains, conflict can develop between the two; however, both chains will see this and oversight at higher levels will compel resolution. The reporting provides senior-level leadership control over the battalion’s leadership issues. 

Daily surveillance is conducted through junior political cadre observing behavior, monitoring conversations, detecting ideological deviation from unit political studies, and keeping files on every unit member. Monitoring is continuous, intrusive, and multi-layered. The goal is not just discipline—it is constant verification of political loyalty and prevention of dissent.

Political and security officers recruit unit members to monitor and report on other unit members who complain, make disloyal statements, or behave suspiciously. Those that are recruited and do an impressive job are frequently accepted to security training academies and are then commissioned as security officers. 

The information that is collected during these surveillance activities is maintained in files on every unit member by the political officer and his staff. These files impact promotions, assignments, and socio-economic opportunities after separation from military service.

During the political officer’s indoctrination sessions, there is focus on Kim Jong-un’s speeches and KWP doctrine. Unit members are required to memorize texts and do self-criticism as do all other North Koreans beginning at age nine. These self-criticism sessions not only require personal confessions of alleged mistakes but critique of fellow unit members as well. The political officer records such criticism in a file on that unit member and that file is continuously updated.

The battalion security officers carry out their duties separate from battalion command. The security officer also uses informants within the unit to detect political disloyalty or illegal activities. Furthermore, the all-powerful KWP Organization and Guidance Department (OGD) can conduct their own inspections of any KPA unit they choose. Also, other than senior battalion officers, unit members do not have access to phones or the media. Even their personal letters are monitored. There is very little, if any privacy. 

This control process is effective due to its redundancy and ideological dominance. This instills fear in each soldier because punishment is severe as a matter of course, which is exactly the aim of the Kim Jong-un regime. 

Every concept of human rights is absolutely discarded within the KPA – personal and professional, religious passion or freedom of thought, personal safety or self-worth, is denied from the moment one is conscripted into the military. Corruption at the upper levels of every KPA unit, beginning at the lower level of battalions and companies, plays a major role as soldiers must bribe – presumably with parents’ assets – to avoid punishment. 

Considering ideological and informational control at North Korean military's battalion level, how are soldiers motivated to go into combat? In combat, all of the above dynamics escalate. North Korean combat motivation is not reducible to ideology alone – it is a hybrid system of indoctrination, surveillance, and institutional coercion embedded at the lowest tactical levels. Motivation is institutionally manufactured, not spontaneous, and it is partly developed through compliance under threat, not just belief. At the battalion level in the KPA, motivation for combat isn’t built around a single mechanism like patriotism or discipline alone—it’s a layered system combining ideology, surveillance, coercion, and group dynamics. What makes it distinctive is how tightly these elements are integrated into daily life.

In the KPA, unit political officers frame combat as a moral obligation. Self-sacrifice for the “Supreme Leader (Suryong)” is not only an honor, but a moral obligation of oneself and one’s family name. Recent KPA unit deployment to support the Russians in their war with Ukraine has demonstrated that each soldier must commit suicide rather than be captured alive. 

This indoctrination process is the KPA’s leadership key control mechanism at the unit level. Senior officers believe that disruption of this control will become the KPA’s greatest weakness.

Human rights in the North Korean military are not dead. To put it bluntly, they never existed.

Sources

Bermudez, Joseph S. “Information and the DPRK’s Military and Power-Holding Elite.” In Kongdan Oh and Ralph C. Hassig, eds., North Korean Policy Elites. IDA Paper, P-3903. Alexandria, VA: Institute for Defense Analysis, June 2004.

Bermudez, Joseph S. North Korean Special Forces (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,1998); pp.215-240.  

George Hutchinson, “Army of the Indoctrinated: The Suryong, the Soldier, and the KPA,“ (Wash, DC: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2022); pp.116.

Byman, Daniel L. and Jennifer Lind. “Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea.” International Security 35.1 (Summer 2010): 44-74.

 

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