Prospects for Changes in North Korea’s Cyber Warfare Capabilities and Threat: Focused on a Military Perspective

This article analyzed North Korea's rapidly changing cyber capabilities and presented countermeasures against future threats from a military perspective. Previous studies had limitations in staying in past data with North Korea experts, so this study differentiated them based on specific latest cases. North Korea is focusing on selecting cyber warfare talents and increasing manpower, strengthening education and training systems, and upgrading cyber attack patterns and technologies, focusing on excluding background components in accordance with domestic and foreign environmental changes such as the signing of the New Treaty between North Korea and Russia, promoting local development 20×10 policies, and developing artificial intelligence (AI) technology. In particular, North Korea laid the foundation for the remarkable development of cyber warfare capabilities based on the New Treaty. In addition, cyber attacks are expanding into the social infrastructure sector to support the economic policies directly managed by Kim Jong-un. It is expected that AI technology will be applied more to North Korea's destructive cyber attacks in the future. In conclusion, Republic of Korea (ROK) should strengthen ROK-U.S. cybersecurity cooperation and develop its capabilities to fully respond to all-round cyber threats, including North Korea's cyber threats, by applying cutting-edge AI technology to cyber warfare in earnest from the perspective of total power.