Traditional Strategic Planning

The paper strives to appreciate the concept of traditional strategic planning and explores the

prevalence of such culture in North Korea after taking into account the historic background of

the country. In order to appreciate and analyse the true extent of the merits of this article and

the nuances of such culture, one has to explore in more detail the concept of strategic

planning and the historic effect of such planning on North Korea and its policies.

Strategic Culture: the concept

The concept of strategic culture is not a new one. In the past it has been applied in various

ways and to a range of countries (e.g. Japan, Germany), regions (e.g. Scandinavia, Pacific

Ocean) and security institutions (e.g. NATO) in order to examine

This brought the question of a state/national culture back to the

agenda and created a new wave of literature which focused on the development of a new tool

of analysis, notably that of strategic culture.

According to Iain Johnston we can distinguish three generations of strategic culture scholars.

One of the first generations of academics who talked about the importance of strategic culture

was Snyder. Strategic culture according to Snyder can be best defined as ‘the sum of ideas,

conditioned emotional responses, and patterns of habitual behaviour that members of a

national strategic community share with regard to nuclear strategy’2. Iain Johnston also

mentions that strategic culture is: ‘an ideational milieu which limits behaviour choices’. This

milieu consists of ‘shared assumption and decision rules that impose a degree of order on

individual and group conceptions of their relationship to their social, organisational or

political environment’3. Johnston mentions the importance of military influence and Grand

strategy doctrine in the study of culture. As he argues, ‘Strategic culture is an

Though he does not entirely support the idea that these cultural factors should be

used as a referral point for future decision making, but feels that these cultural factors are to

be looked into to appreciate the concept of strategic culture in North Korea. Though he

specifically says otherwise he tends to use the history of North Korea as a defence for their

current policy and in this regard the history of the militant nature of the country and the

development of strategic culture needs to be looked into. The author interestingly makes an

analogy of strategic culture to that of the Clausewitzean trinity and talks about how strategic

planning too has an effect on the government, the armed forces and the people. Though again

he does not think it is of the same calibre he believes that the concept can be better

understood with such a context as a referral point. In order to make a fair analysis of this idea

of the author one has to first look at the history of North Korea’s militant culture.

Historical Background

Knowledge of the 20th-century history of Korea is essential to understanding North