DOD Releases Annual Report on Military Developments in North Korea

May 22,2018

The US Department of Defense (DOD) annual report on what has transpired in the world of defense affairs inside North Korea has just been released online, but not by the Pentagon, which has withheld the document from the public for reasons that defy easy explanation. The first clue of the existence of this report came from Bloomberg News, which revealed its existence in a May 17, 2018 article entitled Pentagon Says North Korea’s Regime Has Staked Its Survival on Nuclear Weapons. Most of the 32-age report, entitled Military and Security Developments Involving the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea 2017, deals with North Korea’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles programs. North Korea’s huge but rapidly decaying conventional forces are barely even mentioned in the report. The DOD report makes clear that, in their opinion, Pyongyang views nuclear weapons as an essential deterrent needed to guarantee the security of the hyper-paranoid North Koran regime, which sees enemies all around them. As such, the Pentagon feels that the North Korean regime would be highly unlikely to trade away this deterrent capability, which runs contrary to what Donald Trump thinks.

The full report, in all its unremarkable glory, can be read here.