Tensions among the new soverign nation though emerged as the forces of communism found favor with many of the penensula's population. The North sided with the red Chinese model of rule while the South held a notion of democracy and independance that gained inspiration from western influence. The thirty-eigth parrallel is the division that has since separated the North from the South and that originally marked the lower Russian occupied region from that which the Chinese oversaw. Upon a planned retreat by the Russians in 1948 under UN orders, an attempt at free elections commenced later that year. However their failure resulted due to the fundamentally opposed forms of government that were supported by the newly formed Russo-China communist ideology versus the democratically backed authority of the United Nations in the South. Tensions reached a high point in 1950 when the Northernern forces invaded. This led to the outbreak of a three year civil war that involved the assistance of the US and other nations in securing a protected government in the South. The North was forced into accepting the limit of rule in the Peninsula to the area marked by it's current boundary.

The situation has undoubtedly made for grievance upon both countries as the South is blocked from available access to mainland China, a potentially convenient trasnport route for trade. While the people of the north are subject to repressive conditions as resources are expended to propogate the military regime that has been top priority for the succession of autocratic leaders.

Building North Korea's Military Power: Well into the thirty five years period of rule by the first of the autocratic family dictators, Kim Chong-sung established a priority for missile acquisition. Russia was the source for it's first era of procurement. However it never fully took form as the free rocket over ground(FROG) systems became too dire of a threat to China for whom North Korea relied upon in seeking diplomatic and economic assistance. Thus the acquisition program was scrapped. The SCUD missile program took form in the late 70's with acquisitions from Egypt and soon there after basic production of a similar technology began in the home territory. A skill that the nation has proven is their ability to reverse engineer preexisting missile technology from that of Egypt, Russia and Pakistan in order to complete full scale operations on their own by the late eighties and early nineties.

The handful of ballistic missile types they were engineering included a heavy arsenal of SCUDs, it's trademark No Dong, and Taepo weapons which have varied over time in capability. It is thought that the range of these weapons reaches between 1000 kilometers for SCUDs to about 10,000 km for a properly functioning Taepong 2 that has not yet been succesfully tested.

Missile development became a business enterprise for the North Korean government that began with trading among several countries in the late 1990's particularly Iran, Pakistan, Libya and Syria. Much of the arsenal used by Iran in it's war against Iraq was acquired or aided in development by North Korea. Thus the problematic issue in pursuing containment policies against North Korea's personal armament largely involves the proliferation of arms sold to adversary nations of the United States and it's allies.

The long term tendency of North Koreas' ambition seems to be duplicitous. One, the country has been adept at development and sale to several threatening nations which has provided a reasonable revenue source for the grandeur lifestyle of it's dictator family and menial civic sustainability.

The second apparent usage of the country’s possession of potentially harmful missile technology is to use as bargaining power against the major world powers. North Korea has long been in isolation by not interacting with any Western nations nor many regional neighbors with the exception of China. Such a position leaves a severe economic hardship that has yielded impoverished conditions for much of the country's people, made worse by years of trade sanctions imposed by the major disapproving world powers. Essentially no trade leaves North Korea legitimately. The nation has been a serious culprit on illicit trading activities to finance itself with exports including methamphetamines, counterfeit currency and pirated technologies. It's illicit arms deals has ranked second in it's source of national funding.

By current estimates just over a million soldiers comprise the size of it’s military force. These sheer numbers seem to suggests an advantage if potential regional tensions were to erupt between itself and one of it’s neighbors like South Korea or Japan. Approximately 100,000 are special forces, whom are considered to be far superior in strength and ability than the larger number of regularly enlisted forces. Despite such significant per capita numbers though, the economic depravity and a long trend of trade isolation drastically hinders the nation’s conventional warfare. Any notion of a strong air force, navy, and adequate mobilization of troops lacks necessary resources such as fuel and basic commodities like food to keep the military properly nourished in times of war . It's aircraft is known to be significantly outdated, having been described as vintage aircraft from the Korean War. The aircraft that it does possess came mostly from Russian supplies that were received no later than the early nineties before the fall of the USSR. The severe limitation of fuel also prohibits adequate training of it's forces where by some estimates, a scant twenty or so flight hours per year is logged by the nation’s air force aviators.

The naval power is viewed to be stronger as it possesses a fleet of patrol boats and small destroyers stationed on both the eastern and western coasts of the country. Many of the vessels are believed to be equipped with short to long range missile launching ability.

North Korea’s most destructive force as discussed earlier is it’s long range missile artillery.

As the occaisional test launches have been observed, the history of provocative test firings stirred major attention that started in 1993 with the No Dong. In 1998 they fired a Taepo Dong 1 that were followed by several other non targeted occurrences up until one of it's most scalable tests in the summer of 2006. Over the two day period of July 4 and 5 of 2006, they undertook seven launches of it's most sophisticated non nuclear weapon technology with mixed success of the Taepo, SCUD, and Dong stockpile. But with the Taepog Dong 2 North Korean had hoped to make its biggest statement but the launch was considered a failure.

The Taepog Dong 2 weapon is intended to be released in three separate stages, where several of the components need to perform a function to enable it to meet it's long distance. In the 2006 test, the second stage failed to active during the first 40 seconds of flight. This caused the missile to come falling harmlessly into the Sea of Japan. As intended though the Taepong Dong 2 if engineered properly should be capable of releasing it's second phase to give it a distance of 6000km enough to reach into one fourth of Alaska. Upon release of the third phase, another 4000km range is to become activated that gives it a possible flight nearly to the east coast of the United States. Instead however, with it's failed second stage release the missile made a flight of 650 kilometers before fizzling and plummeting into the sea.

At present, myriad launching systems number close to a thousand that are thought to be placed throughout the country. A majority of these launch terminals are near the border with South Korea as well as others placed around the capital of Pyongyang. This aggressive attack system is currently equipped with most of the missile launchers aimed at the South Korean capital city of Seoul. If such an attack from anyone of the country’s most formidable missiles ocurred into Seoul a likely result would be a loss of several hundred thousand lives. Thus the regional threat is severely taken into consideration by neighboring countries and the reason for South Korea‘s strong alliance with the United States as defense support.

Nuclear History:
Discussion prior to what became know as a major nuclear disaster in the Soviet explosion at Chernobyl, was North Korea's ability to produce it's own radioactive material. Further the capability of equipping it’s devices with a nuclear warhead capable of multiplying destruction to a greater scale particularly one that can be launched at long range into Western nations from it's own soil it's what's largely been at stake.

Since the mid 1990's it's been believed that to some degree their has been an ongoing pursuit for such enrichment of fissile material. During the mid 1990's when a highly enriched uranium program commenced, world powers were unaware. This program grew out of the previously ongoing development program of plutonium production. But because of very close supervision of the illicit program it was subversively transitioned to uranium and went largely unnoticed until October 2002 when the country admitted to it's ongoing efforts in the manufacture of such material. A meaningful factor in helping to improve the North Korean's process was a "missile for nukes program" with Pakistan in 2000-2001. Under the deal North Korea was supplying missiles in exchange for blueprints and centrifuge prototypes designed by the nuclear scientist AQ Khan who was known to be highly influential in Pakistan’s nuclear developments.

Despite the three reported tests since October 2006 to the most recent in February of this year, the country's sophistication in nuclear production has been a subject of great speculation. In the most recent of the underground tests, it is believed that about 20% of explosive material was fissioned. This equates to levels destructive enough to carry out a horrific attack but well short of high level enriched nuclear plutonium or uranium of which it's not completely sure which they currently possess the technology to make. Even if it's ability to properly produce enough material is proven which based upon tests still remains in doubt, it's a major uncertainty whether long range missle equipment could effectively carry such a weapon.

The looming question that has been given an abundance of media attention with North Korea lately is whether they can live up to it’s threats in using radioactive material in launching a functioning armed weapon. Thus the extent of any achievements having been made by North Korea is nearly entirely in being able to use such threats as a coercive diplomatic bargaining chip as the efficacy of threats remains uncertain.

Any such action would undoubtedly pit the world against such an inhumane, despicable act of aggression that would essentially be calling for the calamitous destruction against itself. It's certain that the authoritative ruler, Kim Chung-un understands the dire consequences that a would entail against his country's people from any senseless real life implementation of the weaponary.

The capability for them or any country to effectively launch such a weapon is obviously best left unproven and the free nations of the world have shown their willingness to ensure that this continues to be the case even when it involves bending to unwanted negotiations.