North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

severe draught in 1988 and the dramatic rise in energy and consumer demand caused by the 13 th
World Youth Festival in July 1989. The economic situation continued to deteriorate against the
background of falling communist dominoes in Eastern and Central Europe. Consequently, these
modest plans of economic quasi-liberalization were shelved in favor of orthodox command-andcontrol
remedies, and their leading proponents, such as Yon Hyong Muk and others, were sacked
temporarily.
At the same time, the military wing of the “1980 group,” headed by the then Chief of the
KPA General Staff and Member of the WPK CC Political Bureau, Colonel-General O Guk
Ryol, 27 began to push for a large-scale military reform aimed at “professionalization of the
people’s armed forces” and “separation of the military from politics and economics.” They used
to say that, “the military must prepare for the defense of the Fatherland, not carry the burden of
economic construction or industrial management.” 28 Allegedly, O Guk Ryol advocated the need
to amend the nation’s military doctrine and the KPA’s strategy and tactics in the event of a
potential conflict with the South in such a way that would allow for a reduction in the
conventional forces by 150,000 and would translate into substantial savings in the nation’s
military expenditures. He is rumored to have expressed considerable doubts about the
expediency of the proposed use of the KPA units in the construction of the key infrastructure
facilities envisioned by the 3 rd Seven-Year Plan (1987-1993). In the end, his conservative
opponents succeeded in casting the military reform plans as counter-revolutionary measures
designed to undermine the WPK rule, Kim Il Sung’s government, and Kim Jong Il’s succession
bid. Consequently, these modest plans of gradual military restructuring were shelved, and O Guk
Ryol, the Number Two man in the KPA’s power hierarchy, who was expected to succeed the
ailing and aging Minister of People’s Defense O Jin-U, was suddenly replaced by a hard-line
KPA veteran and guerrilla fighter, Army General Ch’oe Gwan. 29 Thus, in the late 1980s, the
27 O Guk Ryol was born in Manchuria in 1933. His father, O Chung-hup, saved Kim Il Sung’s life at the expense of
his own during one of the guerrilla battles in Manchuria in 1939. Subsequently, O Guk Ryol grew up in Kim Il
Sung’s family in the 1940s. He was one of Kim Jong Il’s early childhood playmates. O Guk Ryol graduated from
the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School and studied at the Frunze Academy of the Soviet General Staff in
Moscow. He can speak Russian and is highly regarded as a modern military leader with global outlook. He was
the Chief of the KPA General Staff from 1979 to February 12, 1988.
28 Materials of the USSR Embassy in the DPRK, 1989.
29 It is noteworthy that Ch’oe Gwan was the only previous Chief of the KPA General Staff (1966-1969) who was
removed for policy disagreements with the top political leadership. At that time, Ch’oe Gwan was one of the
proponents of the “hard-line vis-à-vis South Korea and American imperialism,” which resulted in the Pueblo
incident, North Korean commando raid against the Blue House, and the North Korean capture of the U.S.
surveillance plane ES-121. Ch’oe Gwan was purged in 1969 and exiled to head the Provincial People’s
Committee in South Hwanghae Province throughout the 1970s. He was rehabilitated at the Sixth WPK Party
Congress in October 1980, and was appointed as one of the Vice-Premiers and Chairman of the Fisheries
Committee in the Administrative Council, where he served until his re-appointment as the Chief of the KPA
General Staff in February 1988.
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