North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has fired his top general as part of a reshuffle in the country’s military leadership and wants his army to “gird for war,” according to state media on Thursday.
According to the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), Gen. Pak Su Il was fired as Chief of the General Staff, and Vice Marshal Ri Yong Gil was appointed in his place.
Other “leading commanding officers” were sacked, transferred, or appointed during a Central Military Commission meeting on Wednesday, according to KCNA, without going into specifics.
North Korea’s military leadership changes on a regular basis. Some military officials eventually resurface in other roles, while others vanish from public view.
Motivations behind the leadership changes
According to observers, the new top general, Ri, who assumed the No. 2 position in North Korea’s military hierarchy as recently as December 31, mirrored this.
“Ri Yong Gil is a longstanding member of North Korea’s military elite, who before making it to the top, experienced ups and downs during his career. Seven years ago, he was even rumored to have been executed after a personnel reshuffle,” said Leif-Eric Easley, professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the private think tank Sejong Institute outside Seoul, believes Kim’s military rearrangement could be motivated by a variety of factors and is not necessarily punitive.
“Since Kim Jong Un has frequently promoted, demoted, and dismissed executives according to their ability to perform duties, dismissal of executives may be holding them accountable, but it is inappropriate to consider it as punishment,” Cheong said.
According to Easley, North Korea’s leader may simply be attempting to guarantee that no one beneath him grows too powerful.
“Kim Jong Un frequently rotates leadership posts below him to prevent the emergence in North Korea of anyone like [Wagner Group founder] Yevgeny Prigozhin, who challenged Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authority after amassing personal control of financial assets and loyalty among the armed forces,” Easley explained.
“Making full war preparations” was the top agenda item for the meeting
The military command shake-up was mentioned only near the conclusion of the KCNA piece, which focused on the “important issue of making the army more thoroughly gird for a war given the grave political and military situation prevailing in the Korean Peninsula.”
The report made no mention of South Korea or its main ally, the United States. However, it appeared to make an indirect reference to them, stating that the summit “analyzed the military moves of the main culprits of the deteriorated situation” on the peninsula.
“Making full war preparations” was the top agenda item for the meeting, the KCNA report said.
“The present situation, in which the hostile forces are getting ever more undisguised in their reckless military confrontation with the DPRK, [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea], requires the latter’s army to have more positive, proactive, overwhelming will, and thoroughgoing and perfect military readiness for a war,” it said.
North Korea has increased its military rhetoric this summer, threatening to shoot down US spy flights and responding, for the first time in four decades, to the port call of a US nuclear-capable ballistic missile submarine to South Korea.
Kim issued orders for a war drill
Pyongyang has also demonstrated breakthroughs in ballistic missile technology, claiming to have tested a Hwasong-18 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a flight time long enough to target the US mainland.
That weapon was among many displayed at North Korea’s “Victory Day” parade last month, commemorating the armistice that halted the combat in the Korean War 70 years ago. Technically, the two Koreas are still at war because no formal peace treaty has yet been signed.
Kim issued orders for war drills employing the country’s newest weaponry during a meeting in Pyongyang on Wednesday.
Kim visited arms and munitions factories late last week and delivered “important directions” on “capacity-building for the serial production of new ammunition,” according to a KCNA report.
In the midst of the peninsula’s tensions, South Korea announced this month that a statewide civil defense drill would be held on August 23.
During the 20-minute exercise, the majority of the country’s 51 million citizens are scheduled to practice evacuating to shelters or underground safe areas, which Seoul claims is in reaction to “provocations” from Pyongyang.