Indeed, one of the reasons why Pyongyang is accelerating its nuclear weapons program is because of the country’s very large but outdated conventional forces. This has been a game changer in the South-North military balance. Nevertheless, it is important to keep in mind that, since 2006, North Korea has developed nuclear warheads and increasingly sophisticated ballistic missiles. Today, the Republic of Korea (ROK) is far wealthier than the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and this prosperity divide also has a number of military implications. 1 Since then, economic mismanagement, the 1991 collapse of Pyongyang’s Soviet benefactor, and decades of accelerated South Korean economic growth have gradually closed and then reversed this gap. Long gone are the days of the late 1950s and 1960s, when North Korea held an economic and technological edge over its neighbor to the south, an edge that was also reflected in the military balance between the two sides.
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