North Korea’s Path-Dependent Militaristic Development: Ideas, Policy, and Institutions

Abstract

by focusing on state leaders’ militaristic ideas, their national security policy, and military institutional building, because the path-dependent militarization was the result of the interactions of ideas, policy, and institutions. Specifically the paper is focused on the three following arguments. First, the North Korean leaders’ militaristic ideas critically influenced the security policy-making as well as military institutional building in North Korea, representing the degree of the leaders’ commitment to militaristic ideas. Second, the security policy that reflected the leaders’ ideas served as a guiding instrument for the path-dependent militaristic development and was instrumental in building bridges between the ideas and military institutional building during the implementation stage. Third, once the military-related institutions were consolidated through policy guidance, this institutionalization in turn affected the incumbent’s future policy options as well as his successors’. In order to illuminate the path-dependent development, the paper divides it into three historical periods, centering on the establishment of national security polices (Kim Il Sung’s EDEEP and four military lines in 1962, Kim Jong Il’s military-first policy in the mid-1990s, and Kim Jong Un’s ENEEP in 2013) because the establishment of the security policy was a critical moment in the militaristic development.