North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

him that all significant orders and directions issue forth. For the nation in general, and the
military specifically, this flow is vertical. In most militaries in the world, information flows both
up and down the chain of command and horizontally at each level, while orders flow down.
Within the KPA, information flows up the chain of command and only orders flow down. There
is extremely little horizontal flow of information or communications except at the highest levels.
This vertical flow of information is a means of maintaining strict control over the KPA. The
belief is that if major units were allowed to communicate horizontally, they could unite and
possibly stage a coup.
This flow of information is convoluted - almost Byzantine at times - as it moves through
a series of paths controlled by different and competing organizations with diverse agendas and
priorities in a manner that is quite frequently redundant and inefficient. Most notably, the
information and intelligence flowing upward toward Kim Chong-il and the military and powerholding
elites are processed through what might be described as a lens of self deception
composed of four layers: historical world view, political indoctrination, hatred for the U.S., and
authoritarian cultural rules. The net effect of this is that, whether consciously or subconsciously,
information internally processed or transformed into intelligence passes through a lens of selfdeception
and arrives in a fundamentally flawed state. It is through this flawed process, however,
that decisions within the DPRK are made. When combined with Kim Chong-il’s apparent belief
that he “knows better” and can arrive at better decisions than those around him, this process
often leads to ill-advised courses of action and unanticipated outcomes. It should be anticipated
that such a dynamic will be present during any future dealings with the DPRK, especially during
times of crisis.
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