Songun

Songun elevates the Korean People's Army within North Korea as an organization and as a state function, granting it the primary position in the North Korean government and society. It guides domestic policy and international interactions.^[1] It is the framework for the government, designating the military as the "supreme repository of power". The government grants the Korean People's Army the highest economic and resource-allocation priority and positions it as the model for society to emulate.^[2] Songun represents the ideological concept behind a shift in policies since 1994 which emphasize the people's military over all other aspects of state and society.

Political implications[edit]

One implication of Songun policies is that they not only worked with Juche, the self-reliance ideal promoted by Kim Il Sung, but it also replaced it as the central state ideology as Kim Jong Il consolidated his power.^[18]


The ascendency of the Korean People's Army concerns South Korea and ties into the debate over the Sunshine Policy, its most recent vision of Korean reunification.^[2] Given North Korea's insistence that Songun will facilitate reunification, it is difficult to tell what they expect in the future from South Korea, whose government is not at all supportive of Songun policies, going so far as to outlaw websites within South Korea that promote North Korea's military-first ideas.^[19]


Songun politics have also thrived on the ongoing nuclear crisis.^[20] For the United States, given that its primary concern is the denuclearisation of the peninsula, the concept of military-first politics and ideology is a troubling one.^[21] Songun also seems to fit very well with the possession of nuclear weapons and can be seen as a way of making such weapons central to the government's guiding ideology of self-governance.^[22] It has been said that the longer military-first ideology guides the North Korean government, the less likely it will be that the United States will be able to convince North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons programme. North Korea could perceive attempts at denuclearisation and normalisation of affairs with the United States as a threat to the primacy of the military within North Korea and thus a threat to Songun ideology, a fear which puts into doubt the idea that North Korea may become willing to give up its nuclear weapons programme.^[20]